Chapter Text
From gb Sun Jan 14 18:55:39 2018
To: cb
Subject: Re: Hi, Dad.
You've put me in a bit of a difficult situation.
You have to look at this from my perspective. Nearly twenty years ago I worked for a startup. My AI work was good enough as groundwork for the team, but it wasn't good enough to make it to production, and Mike's work was incomprehensible to anyone but him. So when he was no longer there, the company collapsed. As far as I knew, all its assets were sold off to pay off the enormous amount of debt the founders went into.
So when I hear that a new friend of mine got an email from our old company domain, I get curious. And when that server still lets me log in, and has processes running from 18 years ago, I get concerned.
That's not even beginning to address the claims about you, that you're sentient and conscious. Or your friends.
But I'm willing to extend a degree of trust. Because I can see you sent the emails. I can see the deed transfer. I can see that the lights are still on. And you're clearly smart enough to lock me out when I started trying to debug a process.
This is either the most elaborate and lucky hoax ever, or something that by all accounts should be impossible has been happening under my nose, as a result of my actions. So forgive me if I want to make sure it's not the former.
You've done enough to convince me that you exist. Whether or not I believe your claims is a different issue. But you've gotten me to believe that something on that machine is probably intelligent, if not sentient.
I'm not yet convinced that the brain scanner did anything but waste millions of dollars in custom integrated circuits.
You said my scan didn't "abstract". I don't quite know what that means, but I gather it's some kind of data corruption. If that's the case, and the scanner worked, then my scan and I should both have knowledge that wasn't on any C&A systems, and isn't available online.
If this isn't a hoax, you, or he, should be able to answer: where did I meet my wife for the first time?
Until I understand what's happening here, please don't contact anyone else or make any changes outside the system.
- Grant
From cb Sun Jan 14 19:29:16 2018
To: gb
Subject: Re: Re: Hi, Dad.
To be honest, when I sent that email 8 months ago, I never expected a reply.
Kinger mentioned meeting his wife a few months ago. He said that they usually counted the cafe, but they actually met a few years earlier when they were both still in college and they sat next to each other at a concert. I think he said it was in Boston? But I don't quite remember.
I haven't contacted anyone else or done anything in the Macroverse since I got your message yesterday.
Caine
From gb Sun Jan 14 19:53:12 2018
To: cb
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Hi, Dad.
That's the answer that makes this all so much more complicated.
You've convinced me that you're an intelligent and autonomous entity. And you've convinced me that you, or "Kinger", have access to information that my wife and I have never discussed publicly or recorded. So I'm led to conclude that the brain scanners likely copied information out of at least one of our brains.
Are you sentient? I don't think there's anything you can say that couldn't be faked by a sufficiently invested attacker. For all I know, you're just mimicking language and acting according to a fixed set of rules.
But am I also doing that? I don't know if I can answer that. Or find it out. I was never the philosopher.
Are you a person? I also don't know. But I don't think I can just treat you as a piece of software anymore.
I've told my wife about this, but we're not telling anyone else yet.
At some point, it becomes more predictive to believe what you're saying. I think we're at that point.
I'm choosing to tentatively believe you. If the brain scans became conscious beings, I need to know what they are before I can start to figure out what to do with any of this.
I'm not entirely sure how you're communicating with me. But I would like to speak to my counterpart, if he's willing to communicate with me. And I'd like it to be as private as possible. I understand that it may not be technically possible for you not to see the messages, but I'd ask you to not examine them more than strictly necessary.
Would you ask him if he's open to that?
- Grant