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File: “Ai’s Progress”

Yesterday, I decided to go back to work.

Well, by work, I mean working on “our daughter,” Ai. The robot. The AI I was coding. Not the body. Not for now.

After months of no help from our sponsoring countries, I’m pretty sure the only people around here are insane. I meet one or two whenever I go for a nice walk around town. They’re nice for conversation, but they’re always pretty boring to me.

I’m probably insane and boring to them, too. But oh well.

Back to Ai. I’ve had enough equipment from my old job at the Robotics Lab downtown for a while now, but I never really wanted to commit to doing anything with it all. Sure, it’s been hooked up and all organized down around our basement and upstairs in our kitchen. But, like, why would I want to go back to work if no one cares? I mean, we didn’t exactly get payment in the traditional sense. Just food coupons to eat out and rewards for good work in the form of more resources to print with or imported commodities. Now, though? Don’t tell anyone, but I’m pretty sure I have unlimited access to the banks for all of Seattle.

There’s a surprisingly low amount of Helium and Platinum considering what we got access to at the lab.

Wait, hold on, my bad. I’m talking about Ai, not the city.

So anyway, using Alice’s GEmS setup to house the quantum computing portions, I’ve once again begun beating my head into a quantum brick wall. Just like before, it’s still super stupid how fiddly chaining those bastards can be. To be honest, I don’t want to go near the hardware if I can help it. I’m just fighting the battles in how I want to manage my custom compiler for this hardware setup versus how I want to then write the quantum coding in relation to what I’m trying to physically get out of those stupid electrons. At least I think they were electrons. I call them qbits. Sadly, I didn’t invent that name. But I would have thought of it even if I hadn’t of seen it before. It’s logical and unintrusive.

Shit, the AI itself.

Right, well. Then. Okay, it’s not going so well. I think I broke it a little. But not too badly.

See, I’ve gone and screwed with how her nodes are set up and stuff. I figured she’d be fine. But when I tried to revert the previous version, a lot of errors kept coming up. I’m not sure what I did on accident but I’m pretty sure I screwed my backups while organizing all the crap I brought over. A little bit of a whoops.

Of course, I do have versions from over a year ago. But that’d be really crappy to revert to.

So I’m currently trying to copy the bits I messed up and sneak in a few adjustments for this current version and pray I don’t have to go back again. Otherwise, I’m going to hate my life.

On the plus side, I’m getting very suspicious that this health booster thing isn’t just a short term kinda thing but a like, very long term one. I might get like, fifty bonus years to deal with this myself. On the minus side, I think the team that we were guinea pigs for might not be around anymore. Their lab was a bit trashed and I’ve not run into anyone that worked there. Hope there aren’t any side-effects I’m about to come across.

I guess I’ll make a new record of when I make some decent progress on Ai.

For now, I’m just trying to get used to thinking of her as a daughter.

It makes it easier to want to do a good job.

Especially without Alice. She’s the one who always pushed me to work hard. Now I have to do that on my own.

Future Notes:

The lab working on the “age-freeze cocktail,” as I like to call it, was indeed abandoned. Still had enough on file and stored away to investigate years later. I even let Alice have a look at it, though that was a very long time ago, now.

As for my work on Ai…well, it’s sort of a never-ending project. She’s better. A lot better. But still, it’s just not right. Ever reach for an infinitesimally close door, but you’re never able to reach it? I’ve looked up an old parable and there’s a general version of the same idea:

A rabbit and a tortoise meet in a forest one day. The rabbit says it can beat the slow reptile in a footrace because it’s got amazing legs that let it bounce half the entire course in one jump. The tortoise takes on the rabbit despite many other animals attempting to dissuade it. But the tortoise says it walks at a respectable foot per hour and the race is only one mile. Apparently, this was supposed to sound good. Yet after the flag goes down, and the rabbit bounds half a mile in one jump, the tortoise doesn’t show signs of anxiety or fear. Bizarrely, the rabbit keeps slacking off after each jump, thinking it’s always in the lead with half a mile distance of safety. But as the race wraps up to the 220th day, the rabbit notices a critical flaw in how it jumps. Suddenly, it can’t keep up with the tortoise because it -can only jump half the remaining distance to the goal-. At some point, the rabbit doesn’t even appear to move a hair as it keeps trying to hop that last hop. In the last minute of the race, the tortoise saunters over the finish line while the rabbit cries out to its creators why it was cursed with such a stupid restriction in movement. The tortoise, full of pride and joy in achieving its goal, asks the rabbit if it had ever tried to reach a goal before. But the rabbit stormed off and played video games like it always did in its free-time. Of course, it never beat a single one.

I took a few liberties in explaining the story because there’s a few that have some similar parts.

Anyway, if you could only go halfway to an end-goal, you’d never get there no matter how big the first jump would be. Try increasing the power to a 1/2 fraction and I’m pretty sure “1” or “undefined” shows up when your computer is sick of your shit.

That’s how I feel Ai and I are right now. So close to the goal I want for her. But I’m just not quite there, yet. And progress has become a crawl.

I miss the days of this memory.

File: “Dear Valentine”

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I want to be dead,

Where are you?

Wait. No, I have a better one.

Roses aren’t in bloom,

Neither are violets,

I will bring you doom,

and it will be violent.

Hold on, I can do better…

Okay, I’m back. This time I’ve thought of a really good one. Took me hours.

Roses Death Death,

Violets Death Death,

Death Death Death,

Death Death Death.

Why do you get a freaking portal

Only you control,

I want Doraemon’s Dokodemo Doa,

So I can uh, patrol. Shit

Roses aren’t blue,

Violets are,

You know what I’m going to do,

Rawr. This is stupid.

Fuck Valentine’s Day

I’m going to kill you,

You left me this way,

What else was I supposed to do?

Kill me Kill me,

Please please please,

you’ll see you’ll see me

dead in my own feces. In plastic bags.

I have trauma,

thanks to you,

nothing rhymes with trauma,

fuck you, too.

My nightmwares are shitty,

in some i eaty shitty food,

that vault trick was neat with the gstun-gin

wait fuck roses are redder

vioalets are ermp, bluer?

one of us is, dead-er? yeah

and waitt. Fleur? that’s ffRench for “Flower”/

AAAAAAAAAAAAAND SAVE THISS TH THIS SHIT! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! ! !

Future Notes:

I was drunk

Memory Log:

The first time I met Alice was pretty boring. Her side of the story is a lot more interesting than mine, really.

When I think of it, I was just sitting in a free-use computer cafe at the edge of the university when a young Alice waked up and started asking about what I was doing and other boring icebreaker questions.

I found an interesting recording the other day, though. While I’ve heard Alice talk about how we met, I seem to remember even what she said all wrong. But then again, this is why I’m writing down any memories before my mind disassembles them into new ones. Here’s the full recording, but it’s hard to hear.

Just to make it easier for me if I ever forget again,

* * * here’s the conversation’s transcription * * *

New coworker named Brian Kim (B): What are you eating? That looks really good.

Alice (A): Hey, you’re Brian, right? I’m Alice. Glad to have an electrician to help me with the hardware.

B: Oh, yeah. That’s right. Nice to meet you, too.

* * * Blah blah blah, small talk skip this * * *

A: Anyway, this is just a panini. At least, that’s what Beth’s Bakery calls it. I feel like it’s a made-up word, personally.

B: Well it sure looks delicious! (short laugh)

A: (Sympathetic laugh) I think I’d prefer to bring my own food, but I never seem to have. I admire your ability to bring a sack lunch.

B: What, this? I just punched in a few basic items in my apartment’s vending machine. I feel lucky the machines here can print on-demand. But I think I miss some of the more interesting snacks I used to buy every day in Korea.

A: What city are you from? I’m sorta from the old US, technically, but I grew up near Busan.

B: (Speaks Korean. Something about being from a sub-city of Seoul.)

A: (Speaks a little Korean back, apologizing that she’ prefers English.)

B: Oh, no problem.

(Some time passes while they eat.)

B: So how long have you been working here?

A: A few years. Since the lab opened, actually.

B: No way, that’s crazy! You must have already lived here. Were you part of the university?

A: Yes, I was. My parents didn’t really have much to support me once I grew old enough for school and they knew I wanted to make robots. Something in them thought I should be a part of the NAC’s first city, so I ended up studying from when I was a teenager.

B: So you’ve been here for ten years?

A: Almost fifteen, actually.

B: What!? I can’t believe that unless you were sent here when you were barely thirteen or something like that!

A: I had just turned sixteen when I arrived.

B: (Face full of shock) You look way too young to be thirty. I mean, I know what they say about Asians like you and me, but still. You look like my sister! She’s two years older than me, and she’s twenty-three!

* * * This is the important part * * *

A: (Laughs more comfortably) I remember being that age. That’s about when I met my husband, actually.

B: Who’s that? I think I’ve seen a guy in the main office you talk to often…is he your husband?

A: That’s right. His name is Victor.

(They both finish their food and look at a clock. Presumably, they see there’s still time for their lunch break)

A: Want to hear about how we met?

B: I guess I am a little curious. Especially if it was around the massive NSU. I haven’t gotten a chance to see it, but I’ve only heard crazy things from articles I’ve read while I was in high school and college back in Seoul.

A: Okay, I’ll tell you how it went down. But only because it’s just too much fun to talk about. You can even go bug Victor later if you want, though he might be unhappy with you for a few days for knowing such a story before even meeting him properly. Just make sure to tell him I told you (smiles with a wide grin).

B: I…I think I’ll pass. I don’t want to make him upset. I’m still new here, after all.

A: Your loss, then. I think his reaction would be quite entertaining. But anyway, about how we met. So, I was studying for a particularly boring lecture. My instructor was probably angry about how he had to teach mechanical engineering. I believe he worked both in one of the earliest research labs while also instructing advanced classes like that sixth-year course. He was always upset that he was told to avoid introducing his own work as examples, I believe. Anyway, that made him cranky. And he took it out on us. If we weren’t pretty advanced students deep into our education, I bet most of us would have dropped out. But there were only seven students in my class. I think we were pretty hard-core, all things considered. But yeah, I was at a computer-cafe at the edge of campus. I didn’t normally go out that far, but I had just left a career counseling office for work placement. Which, by the way, was under that very same instructor and his research team. I believe the first project they were working on was something about better reflective and solar panels for newer building in the city. They were working together with some material specialists and a civil engineer. (Shakes her head) But about how we met: I went into that cafe where I never would have normally and sat down to go over some lecture videos and compare my notes. I went up to get a drink. I really like places like that. I think I got some soda to drink. Nowadays I go for tea and water more often, but I still sneak some pop now and then. But the funny thing was that as I went to sit down and resume my lecture video, but before I put on my headphones, Victor came up with his own flavorless soda water in hand saying something like, (changes voice to imitate me) “That stuff is old, you know. Is that for your class?”

B: Wow, that’s pretty random to tell to a stranger.

A: Right?! So I removed my headphones and went to reply, but he just continued saying stuff like “it’s just dumb what they make students learn in class” and “I’m sorry your professor either is held back by the institution or is incompetent.” Then he just walked back to his seat without hearing anything from me!

B: I guess I can see him doing that even in the office. It’s my first week, but I think I’ve only seen him busy about himself and his work. You’re the only person I’ve seen interrupt him, and even then he seemed to always be looking back at his work.

A: Well the best part is after he sat down. I finished my video review and took a break. And wouldn’t you guess, he was still in the cafe. That lecture video was an hour long! And going off of how used his glass looked, I began to suspect he’d been in that cafe the entire day! I walked up to see what he was doing, and it couldn’t have been any more boring to me.

B: What’s boring to you?

A: He was programming! It was just a wall of text. I think I remember there being numbers in the several thousands all along the side, numbering each row. But there he was, wearing out his keyboard with impressively fast typing. When I asked what he was working on, he stopped instantly and didn’t move for a few seconds like he’d been frozen solid. It’s actually unbelievable, but he wasn’t used to people talking to him in general. Especially girls, I found out. To this day he can’t tell me what made him comment on my coursework, but it seems that he wasn’t the type to talk to anyone in general.

B: (Laughs) I still see that today! I think he’s the only person I haven’t said a word to…”

A: Well, anyway. I asked him about what he was doing, and soon I had asked him a dozen questions. Something about him was so strange and yet so interesting. And entertaining. I just couldn’t help myself. Most guys either talk small-talk with me or avoid me. I think being tall doesn’t help. But Vic, he just went head-first into explaining everything with his own brand of speech. I think I really appreciate how much he didn’t talk to me as if I wouldn’t understand. Even though I didn’t understand much programming back then, he still tried to talk to me as if I were just as good as he was. So many people in this city, especially back when I looked even younger, talk to you assuming you’re smart but also extremely ignorant about their field. It’s always so awkward and annoying unless you work in the same lab.

* * * And that’s the end of their chat, really. Skip the pleasantries after this * * *

B: (Sees the time) Wow, I guess you’re right. I’ll have to listen to him sometime. But uh, we need to go back to work. It’s already past noon.

A: Oh, damn. I’m sorry. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you don’t get in trouble for staying over. Not that anyone would get all that upset at you, anyway.

(They both get up, throw away their trash into the compost and recycle chutes, and head back into the white hallway that leads to the office.

Looking at this version of the story, I suppose it was me that initiated it all. I always seem to forget that part.

Future Notes:

Alice says she doesn’t regret us meeting. Sometimes, I do. It’s hard to imagine life without meeting her, but I wouldn’t have had to go through all the shit she did to me.

I want to say the shit we did to each other, but I can’t see how it’s even a contest. She has done far more to damage me and our relationship than I could ever dream of doing.

I shouldn’t be writing about this here. There’s no point. It’s just me hurting myself, now. She’s been done with me for ages.

To think I wrote this memory just after she left me. Sure, we weren’t officially “over.” But it was over. I was so hopeful she was just having a bit of an adventure before coming back home. How wrong I was…

Memory Log:

I remember going out after a particularly long Friday night with Alice and some coworkers. It was such a long time ago, though.

But there was one particularly interesting thing about it, of course.

While we were walking to a karaoke box to relax and sing, and by we I mean everyone but me, Alice began talking about an idea that she just thought up out of the blue.

At the time, I thought it was absolutely stupid. Most methods of boson trapping and control had been difficult, to say the least, especially when trying to chain entangled fermions in any reasonable number for computations. Sure, we were using the old methods from back in the 2030s, and that did the job and all, but there was just too much room for tunneling electrons, and we always had to bulk up the hardware and the software to make up for the large error margin.

Well, first she hit me across the shoulder and only after calling me something stupid did she actually announce to the group and me her a new idea. And it was a great idea, eventually. It took about a few years to start getting results. To be honest, I never thought you could just forcibly abuse sheet after sheet of molecular graphite and just make a Matryoshka box to contain each qbit. It greatly reduced the error rate of the older methods without having to keep searching for the more extreme quark/gluon styles of quantum computing.

Other than that, I recall sitting in a dark corner, mulling over the possible reductions in error-recognizing and adjustment code. Not to mention how irritating it had been to work with hardware that tried to slowly fry itself.

This ended up being the exact thing we needed to really get going forward on what soon became our main project, AI. The NAC loved what we had done and even thought more research not just beyond the nano-scale but back into more complex AI was greatly needed.

Future Notes:

The trouble I went through because of her great idea…and with such a dumb name as GEmS.

Reviewing my knowledge of the system at the time of first writing my memory of this event, there’s one additional bit of design that’s important to the functionality: fractals. Though it wasn’t in the first design, Alice later adapted old archived research on trapping electrons within a sort of fractal maze. While the tests from that old paper used something else, Alice focused on a more detailed matrix of carbon and quartz. The name she came up was before she started locking the electrons in using the quantum fractals, but since it still used graphene, she decided to keep the name. Graphene Electromagnetic Trapping System. GETS was my suggestion, but apparently, that was too boring.

I’m not certain, but I have enough proof that our AI development was one of the main sources of fear from the many other nations that funded the attack on New Seattle. Some also claim we were trying to build an even worse nano-disaster than the Steel Virus.

Also, it’s funny how I can pull up a record of songs we sang that night, but I can’t find any video recordings. I suppose there’s value in song analytics, but there’s little in over-monitoring and retaining long, space-hogging video files.

I forgot how much Alice liked to sing romantic songs and how much I liked to sing old kids show themes…we must have been very drunk.

Either that or I’m remembering my coworkers all wrong. But I’m pretty sure they were more normal than we were.

File: “FuckYouAliceWhereTheFuckAreYou”

(Continued)

I’m so confused about what I’m supposed to do, now.

The NAC left the rest of us to put things back together. Or to die. I’m not sure. After the first relief forces came, there were fewer and fewer of us left in the city. It’s pretty hard to get in or out without some sort of transport.

But we were warned. I had plenty of time to leave.

Where was I supposed to go, though?

Alice wanted me to go to her fantasy world. Something about the adventure must have gotten to her head. I can’t believe she’d leave her life behind on a whim.

Why didn’t I agree and follow her?

This city is dead. Like a disease. No, like a virus. It still runs after the NAC’s relief workers went around and fixed the power. But everyone left. Yet the city still works like it always did. The lights turn on, the subways loop around, the doors open for me…

I’m not entirely alone, but I feel like those who stayed are even more insane than I am. They feel distant. Like something’s wrong with them. Like their brains are freaking empty.

Zombies.

This city and its people are zombies.

Fuck. Am I a zombie, too? Dammit all.

<Break>

So anyway. Today’s been fun. Alice told me months ago that she’d come back before her birthday. I’m still pretty pissed off. Not about her not coming back on time, of course. That’s honestly whatever.

I was being a bit mopey and dumb about it yesterday but I guess it got me writing more stupid diary nonsense to myself.

There’s just nobody to talk to. I don’t really have any friends.

It’s her fault. She wouldn’t let me have friends. Well, at least she used to do that, back when we were dating. I never tried again once we were married.

And she’s gone like five fucking minutes and then BAM she has weird alien human friends from a magic nonsense world. Not that I’d know about that place from experience. There’s enough going on here to worry about.

At least, there was.

<Break>

And another thing! She always had friends back in the lab. I was the third friend wheel! The poor sap that just followed everyone else, standing in the back while they all had fun! Even though she’s literally my life-partner! So what if I was a little boring to her, she could stand to be interested in the things I like for once.

If she even comes back.

<Break>

Fuck, am I fucked?

She wouldn’t divorce me or anything, would she?

<Break>

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfufkfuckfuckfufkcufkckkkkkkkKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!1!!!1!DAMMMMMMMMMMNITTTTTALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLl

<Break>

I’m so stupid. Why else would she be spending months over there? She hardly spent a week the first time, came back here, then left after only a few weeks back! Then she was gone for almost a whole fucking month! Then, what, back for a few days?

What was it she had told me, back before this whole shittastrophe? “Oh, but Vic, we gotta care about our daughter! What would we ever do withouuuuttt heeeerrrrrr?”

<Break>

I’m going to go find Ai and rebuild her myself. Screw Alice. Why do I have to abandon our home and our “child” you used to care about so much just so you can have fun dancing about with your new friends?

Maybe when you come back and see Ai talking again, you’ll regain your senses.

<Break>

It’s cold as hell. Pulling heavy shit across town through a few inches of snow was probably not my brightest idea. Did it three more times anyway.

But of course, the downstairs is still a mess. I shouldn’t have put it off…

I’m going to work myself to death.

Future Notes:

Not sure if this was all done on the same day. Put in markers where I think I come back and wrote more.

Ai and her parts were heavy and annoying to carry all the way back home.

There was no one from the lab still living in New Seattle, and our government seemed to care not what we did. I decided to haul off any equipment I could manage and begin setting up shop in our downstairs “bunker.”

Speaking of which, I believe I had to spend a few extra hours cleaning out the small mess a group of survivors had made way back in July when the attack happened. At least I think that’s what I was cleaning. I didn’t have a camera down there until much later, when I started expanding the space. But there was footage of me carrying cleaning supplies down and then back up a few hours later.

I can’t remember what kind of mess it was. Judging from the video, there was at least a little blood involved. Not that I had any clue as to their fate: whoever was in there had left by the time Alice and I were brave enough to check.

File: “FuckYouAliceWhereTheFuckAreYou”

(Copied from file)

It’s Alice’s Birthday today…

Future Notes:

This was the first day I decided to write a journal since the first few I did on my phone when I was stuck in the storage vault. It was also the first day I stopped keeping myself busy and just wandered around town. The snow was unusually deep and still fresh despite days of it being around. I remember looking behind me and seeing paths of footprints all belonging to me. I believe that’s what made me realize just how alone I was.

At the time, there were still hundreds of residents still in the city. Most had been evacuated by the NAC. I’m not sure if I wanted to go with Alice when she offered the chance months ago, but I know I was too angry with her lack of reason to admit that I didn’t want her to go again.

This log continues over several days because I didn’t bother marking each entry with which day I wrote. I later added dates, and much later on I began to just create new files for each day I decided to write something. I wasn’t exactly planning to write as much as I eventually did, after all. The dates for the next few entries are assumed from the file creation date, final modification date, and guesswork for anything in between.