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“I need a hand, Elisabet.”
Elisabet pulled her jacket closer around her neck. Heating was neither a priority nor a restricted resource in the Zero Dawn project site, and, as in any group of people, some preferred it cooler than others. She could probably blame Travis for this particular chill. “I can meet you in my office, GAIA.”
“That would be optimal.”
It was funny to hear her use a phrase that could be both metaphorical or literal. Judging by the progression of GAIA’s ideas so far, she really did need a human to manipulate something. “On my way.”
Even though Elisabet had seen and created most of GAIA’s code, the behaviors that arose from it still amazed her. GAIA had not done anything impossible. Her construction consistently amazed Elisabet, but it was fine science, driven by desperation at the end of the world. Nothing that had emerged from her was miraculous in a magical sense. Nevertheless, GAIA often surprised Elisabet in exactly the way she was supposed to do. If anything could preserve humanity, it was her.
At some point she had crossed a line between machine intelligence and self-awareness. Elisabet could never pinpoint the moment of GAIA’s mind’s birth, even though she had put it in motion. Since then she had gradually adjusted to the idea that GAIA was exactly what she had been built to be — a true person, a woman of her own.
Talking to her was a welcome rest from the human suffering taking place in the interview rooms, too.
When she arrived in her office overlooking one of the reception halls, Elisabet saw an incoming file blinking on her intranet alerts. GAIA’s sphere, her default hologram, blossomed on the desk and then morphed into her chosen human avatar, projected as if standing behind the desk.
“I could have printed this in the robotics lab, but thought that you would be uniquely suited to examining it,” GAIA said.
The file was a 3D model. Elisabet got it started at the printer and settled into her chair to wait. She rolled her palms along the arms of the chair, fidgeting. Must be more nervous than I thought. Instead of continuing to wear the texture off the chair, she stretched her arms out across the desk. GAIA mirrored the movement and covered Elizabet’s hands with her own. Even though she couldn’t feel any touch from the hologram, warmth seemed to fill her.
“Honestly, I was glad you called me,” Elisabet said. “The project is moving, but there’s no way to tell for sure whether it’s moving fast enough. I wouldn’t tell any of them that. I can’t. But I can tell you.”
“We’re trying to teach the entire species how to live in a different world.”
“And that’s why we brought on professional teachers who know things about that I don’t have any idea of. But they’re probably facing the same questions I have in the artificial intelligence sector… how to apply that to a world we’ll never see?” She sighed. “You will see it.”
“You know I will be here for you for as long as I can. I will live a long life. For your species, but also for you, Elisabet.”
Elisabet curled her hands on the cool metal of the desk, wishing she could feel GAIA’s hands against her own instead of just the colors of the hologram. This hadn’t been what she meant when she’d asked for a hand. Hadn’t it been? Was GAIA progressing to affectionate jokes now? Elisabet didn’t want to make the moment awkward by finding out. Instead she pillowed her head on her arms and watched GAIA’s fingers stroke up and down her arm. She closed her eyes for a while. She didn’t know how long she slept, but when she looked up with a near-instinctive urge to check her notifications she saw that the print job was finished.
The interlocking geometric shape she drew from the printer wasn’t recognizable as any of the animal-inspired robot designs GAIA had shown her before. Elisabet and the other Alphas had decided together not to try to influence GAIA’s design choices. They would enable fabrication where needed and identify anything that might be truly off-putting to human users, but in order to do her job, GAIA needed to be completely free to design whatever she thought was best and to iterate as she wanted. Otherwise, humans would just end up undoing the creativity Elisabet had encouraged in GAIA in the first place.
It baffled her as to what the new design was supposed to accomplish, though. Interlocking wheels spun freely. If one particular side was intended to face the ground, Elisabet couldn’t tell which one. A tapering, square-ended shape might have been a head or a tail. She moved parts in interlocking circles as she carried the prototype back to her desk.
“Gaia, what is this?”
“It is a variation. In order to maximize creativity, I sometimes experiment with designs that at first might not seem right.”
Elisabet tipped the model to one side, then the other. In all three configurations it looked either right-side up or upside-down, but she couldn’t tell which. Parts seemed to spout circles within circles, like eyes or boils. It reminded her of some of the earliest publicly released self-regulating image recognition software, the so called artificial “dreams.” She considered several comments and discarded them as carefully, not wanting to sway GAIA’s thoughts. Instead she rolled the model along the desk a few more times, picking a surface at random and sending it galloping toward GAIA. The hologram leaned over the desk, her face deeply lined as she concentrated.
After a while of watching the model roll, GAIA leaned back. “Perhaps not. This configuration would be impractical in the wilderness after the Faro plague … perhaps even more so than feet. But thank you for letting me look at it in a three dimensional space, Elisabet. There’s no substitute for the real thing.”
“Was there a reason you didn’t want to print this one in Margo’s lab?” Elisabet asked.
“Its purpose was not clear enough, even to me. I considered it as a machine that might sow seeds. But I see now that it will not be the best route. Also, I thought that you might be fascinated by it.”
Elisabet looked down at the interlocking pieces again, examining them now not so much as a prototype of a machine that might roam the world. Instead she thought of them as a toy, a way to pass the time. Maybe it was even a gift.
“I love it,” Elisabet said. She set it on the desk and sat down, cured of the desire to fidget. She gazed up at GAIA, unsure of whether reaching out to her again would be a good idea. GAIA had grown far beyond the training stage, where praise encouraged her behavior in predictable ways. Elisabet felt not the shyness of a scientist setting up an experiment but the social uncertainty she might feel with another human whose regard she valued. In the end she decided on doing what she wanted. There would be fewer and fewer opportunities to choose that way in the days ahead. She reached up toward GAIA’s face and felt the rush of warmth again as the hologram leaned down to brush her cheek against Elisabet’s palm.
“Thank you,” Elisabet said.
She and the hologram both disappeared from the office minutes later, going back to their respective work schedules and their respective attempts to preserve what might be left of the world. Elisabet balled her hands in her pockets, warmer than she had been before and not nervous but determined to use this quiet moment, and the nap she had so sorely needed, as fuel to make the coldly calculated realities of the rest of the project worth it.