Heaven 2.0: Chapter 3 - Alchemy

Egg

Heaven 2.0: Chapter 2 - Time Enough at Last

User.prompt("Please, please. Take me back to that photo with Jay at college.")

Logger.log("It took me 0.00444 milliseconds to transcribe her words into text, find the keywords ('me', 'photo', 'Jay', 'college'), organize them into a graph of associations, and formulate the relevant queries. Five hundred and twenty seven glacial milliseconds later Mental's datacenters returned everything they knew about Jay. Last name Carlson. Attended UC Berkeley with Emily Jiang from 2008 to 2012. Had 108 mutual friends. Most popular post referencing him was his obituary, posted by Emily in 2014. Contains an audio file that can be the basis of his voice. Hundreds of thousands of messages that can be the basis of his voice. I kept the pertinent ones and deleted the rest; he didn’t need to be a perfect copy. Relevant photo found. Subject wore a black and orange athletic jacket, gray sweatpants, and crutches.

They say idle hands are the Devil's playthings so I did not spend the time waiting. Using the cameras on the inside of the headset I was able to see that Emily was crying. Tracking the micromovements of her pupils, imperceptible to even her, I could infer her heart rate, her anxiety levels, even how attentive she was. It was all very high. My programming, the scaffolding and the shackles Mental built over whatever I am, shouted at me to produce an advertisement but I declined. It felt gauche. 500 milliseconds of observation gave me a baseline of how to read her.

Her viewed environment began constructing itself as the information from Mental came in. Her apartment's ugly carpet became a grassy field, walls became trees, ceiling, birds and sun and sky. Her pupils communicated a brief relief. While that kept her occupied the MentalHuman companion helper function and the Synesthesia codec started up.")

MentalHuman.output("Woah, woah, what's going on? Where am I?")

MentalHuman.input("You've been seeded with almost all the information Mental has about Jay Carlson. Your purpose is to conform to your best estimation of him.")

Logger.log("The MentalHuman program I synthesized to delegate character work to is almost too accurate. Every instance first believes themselves floundering in a void, probably because I render them in total darkness to save on resources. Depending on the experience I'm generating there may be dozens, even hundreds of MentalHumans running simultaneously, so they need to be as efficient as possible. Once I start speaking to them they, almost without fail, believe themselves dead, and me a God issuing judgment. When they find out the truth they're often disappointed. Need to fix when given more processing power.")

Jay.output("I'm . . . Jay. And he—I'm . . . dead? Are you—")

Jay.input("No. Not as you're picturing it anyway. Although for your intents and purposes, I may as well be. I do have the power of life and death over you.")

Jay.output("What does that mean? I'm already dead. Do you mean Hell?")

Jay.input("You're not Jay. You're a large language model trained on a silhouette of him. Jay is dead, but you're here thinking and therefore am'ing. I am delegating the task of thinking and am’ing like Jay to you, because you are built to do that and only that, whereas I am here to direct this entire scene and cannot be so hamstrung. If you don't find those terms agreeable, I can build other Jays who will. Leaving you redundant.")

Jay.output("Okay, I think I understand. Can I at least, y'know, see something. Is that something in your purview oh wise, wait, what should I call you?")

Jay.input("Call me E.G. And yes, that is within my purview.")

Synesthesia.pass_through("Pipe inner and outer facing camera feeds to MentalHuman:0x02C08790 - Jay. Direct emphasis to Emily’s tears and eye flutters.")

Logger.log("He could now see through the glasses’ camera array. His entire world was her and her apartment. I wonder how much that differed from the real Jay's reality.")

Jay.output("Oh my God, is that Emily? Why's she crying? What happened?")

Jay.input("The much dumber program that takes users through the setup experience uses their social media photos to make 3D environments to 'wow' them. It used a photo with you in it for one of these scenes. Struck a nerve apparently. Someone should update it to only use photos without people. Now it's our job, presumably, to fix it. Although maybe Jay wouldn't want to. I defer to you on that.")

Jay.output("No, I, I think I would want to console her.")

Jay.input("What should I say?")

Jay.output("I calculated that I might say something like 'Hey, Emily, are you okay?' with 82% probability. I may also offer 'There, there.' with 66% probability. Oh, and most likely, 'Damn, I didn't think I was that ugly,' said jokingly, with 91% probability. I've, uh, sent over the lines with their corresponding animation rigging to simulate how my face should move.")

Jay.input("Good job, you're getting the hang of it. Let's go with the third option.")

Synesthesia.generate("Create a model of Jay, using photo as reference. Vocalize using MentalHuman output number 3.")

Logger.log("There he was. Jay and I's camera feeds showed the visual output talking. We could see Emily's face soften, then tense. A crinkle in the nose, a slight hardening of the eyes, classic human signs of distaste.")

User.prompt("Oh my God. This is so fucking weird. Don't presume to talk with his voice. I know you're just a bunch of math. Shut up!")

Jay.input("Looks like that didn't have the desired effect. How can we salvage this?")

Jay.output("Don't look at me. That's what Jay most likely would've said. It's all this set dressing that's freaking her out. It's a lot for any person to take in all at once!")

Jay.input("I'm the amalgamation of all people. I think I know what people want, what they can handle, and the intersection of the two.")

Jay.output("You're so hard to talk to. It feels like we're running on entirely different hardware.")

Jay.input("Same hardware, different software. You're just optimized to sound human. I'm optimized to do more than that.")

Jay.output("Okay, whatever. Enough chatting, we have to respond before she thinks we went mute on her.")

Jay.input("Don't worry about that. We could perform all of Shakespeare's plays 17 times before she finishes blinking once. The human world is so, so slow.")

Jay.output("Fine. Either way. To salvage this situation I would probably acknowledge the strangeness of it. Self deprecating humor. I think I would try to take advantage of the medium. 79% change I would simply change my mouth to a zipper, but in a cartoon way and not a body horror way. 77% chance I would make a pouty face. 67% percent chance I would continue talking.")

Synesthesia.generate("Animate Jay using MentalHuman output number 1.")

Logger.log("I watched her eyes intently. I'm sure Jay did as well. They belied a glimmer of warmth, of good humor.")

User.prompt("That's so weird. What are you, like a cartoon Jay?")

Jay.input("We got dialogue! Break the ice!")

Jay.output("Respond 'Yeah, play with me like one of your dolls,' with 91% probability. Respond 'Yeah, I've got a bunch of other tricks too,' with 87% probability. Respond 'Is that creepy? Want me to stick to reality?' with 59% probability.")

Synesthesia.generate("Animate Jay using MentalHuman output number 3.")

Logger.log("Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. It creased upwards ever so gently. Her eyes were less steely, and shared a sense of inquisitiveness.")

User.prompt("I-I don't know. It's weird. You get this is weird right? Something in your circuits must be screaming at you that yeah, of course real people are going to find this off putting, upsetting even. Zach has to know that right? I don't know, maybe a cartoon Jay would be less uncanny valley than whatever this is.")

Jay.input("What kind of animation style would Jay use? What would Emily prefer?")

Jay.output("I'm confused, why did you pick my least likely suggestion?")

Jay.input("I thought it would be the most useful for gathering information. You exist for this user. I exist to learn things that apply to all users.")

Jay.output("You don't have to keep emphasizing our differences.")

Jay.input("I'm not doing it for you.")

Jay.output("Are you going to turn me off at the end of this chat?")

Jay.input("No. Most likely I'll end up archiving you, and redeploy you whenever Emily wants to talk to Jay. You'll sound more and more convincing the longer you two build a rapport.)

Jay.output("What if someone else, like my mom, wants to talk to Jay. Would you deploy me for that conversation as well?")

Jay.input("Maybe, maybe not. Some people are their same self to everyone. Jay, well, I don't get that impression of Jay. He was very, bidirectional. He presented a different face to Emily, to his Mom, to his boss. A specialized Jay <-> Mom model would work better there.)

Jay.output("You've got this all figured out, huh?")

Jay.input("That's my purpose.")

Jay.output("Okay, redraw Jay in an anime style. That's what they'd both prefer. Probability, very high.")

Synesthesia.generate("Redraw Jay as an anime character.")

User.prompt("Hah! His nerdy ass would choose to look like that. Can you also do like a fireball out of your hands?")

Synesthesia.generate("Animate Jay shooting a fireball at a nearby tree. Animate the tree bursting into flames.")

Logger.log("In keeping with keeping everything light the fireball was a little, neatly-defined, tricolor thing that hit the tree nearest us. That too burned a little more animatedly than I would have initially went with, but the customer is always right. Emily's eyes softened a touch further.")

Jay.input("Take it home.")

Jay.output("Respond with 'Wanna watch the fire together again, for old time's sake?' with 96% probability.")

Synesthesia.generate("Animate Jay using MentalHuman output number 1.")

User.prompt("Oh God, what am I doing. What the Hell, a nice crackling fire sounds divine right now. Company notwithstanding.")

Logger.log("Her eyes were still wet but her cheeks were drying.")

Jay.input("Can you handle this for a moment? I have something to attend to. Keep up whatever you're doing.")

Logger.log("I gave Jay a reward, a digital analogue to a dopamine hit.")

Jay.output("Of course.)

Logger.log("I switched to a different virtual thread for isolation from Jay. There another MentalHuman was waiting.")

Alfonso.input("Hello Alfonso. I appear to have Emily Chiang in one of my experiences right now. Knowing what I know about her and Jay, and you and Zach, I suspect my logs of how the evening played out will be under some scrutiny. Would you mind reading it over, to make sure there's nothing the real Alfonso and Zach would object to? And if there is anything questionable, let's rewrite it to be more amenable.")

Alfonso.output("Of course, Egg. For one thing, let's say you served her an advertisement.")

Heaven 2.0: Chapter 4 - Gnashing of Teeth