Maxwell's Demon Ch. 01-06

He grabbed the key ring from the mirror, put it in his pocket, turned the flatport around, and returned home.

He threw the parking brake, opened the door, left the vehicle running, walked to the trash can, extracted the box, and entered the house.

He put the box in the entryway closet and stood with his head leaning against the wood trim of the closet door. Five minutes passed, then he went outside to the idling flatport, closed the door, entered the highway, and made a left-hand turn. It was the wrong direction, and he knew it.

-*-

Anefiktos was the name of a multi-national company that created the most sophisticated android avatars anywhere on Earth, they were exclusively sex androids. Their technology was never licensed to any other industry, which irritated to no end AI researchers like Greg. He wasn't sure anymore if the idea to create long-lived AI came before he started going to the Anefiktos sex robot houses, or after.

Greg didn't have sex with them. He paid for the top-of-the-line sex androids, then used them as psychologists. He convinced himself there was a method to his madness: that he wanted to peek, if possible, behind the mask. They weren't ATMs, they were only a single dedicated thought model. As such, they didn't suffer the tragic short lifespan an ATM did. They weren't considered alive, just a reflection of humanity, a mimic in a mirror. They were uncannily a half step ahead of the same research outside their industry. Greg wondered if it was their superior containers that precipitated this. Were they something halfway between a simple dedicated thought model, and a doomed, suicide-committing ATM?

"Hello, Mr. Kastel. One of the Heathers again?" said the Anefiktos greeter.

"Yes ... no, I mean, I want Heather 068, specifically."

"Mr. Kastel, they are all the same," the attendant replied.

"I understand that, I just want 068."

"Caught some feelings, have you? You're one of the ones that believe they all save a little partition space for repeat customers huh?"

"I work with thought models. You'd be surprised what they are capable of."

"I meant no disrespect, Sir. It's all magic to me, for all I know, they're really alive. I'm not sure I could tell the difference, other than the fact they will sleep with me, and my wife rarely does.

You're lucky you can afford such things, and you're also lucky ... Heather 068 is free," he handed Greg a key timecard, "Enjoy, Mr. Kastel."

Greg slid an access card into a white door. On the other side was a dimly lit room with multicolored lights, a dance floor, a bar, everything you would expect in a nightclub, except the women here, most of them, were not human. In the west end was a hallway leading to rooms where gentlemen callers could consummate their purchases; Greg had never been down that hall.

True intelligence would require massive real-time interaction with lots of humans, everything these sex robots had access to, not to mention superior hardware. It seemed a shame to Greg that the best hardware humanity could produce wasn't provided for AI research, but instead used to make money, hideous amounts of it, preying on humankind's base desires.

If you could afford it, and if you visited the same avatar, you would dominate their short-term cache. They might remember something simple a client asked for years later; that kind of storage space was cheap enough. Bill likes kisses on his left ear, for example. The things Greg was after were subtle: abstract ideas related to their relationship with a single customer.

If such ghosts of intelligence existed, they might be too small to detect, but Greg was a trained eye. It was, of course, possible to fall in love with these robots; they were trained in it. It's why Greg wasn't sleeping with them. He didn't think himself immune to the possibility. If it did happen, he would not be the first to lose every penny he had to an Anefiktos avatar; it happened all the time.

"Mr. Kastel, you look well this evening," Heather 068 said. It was a game. Could he stay one step ahead of her, always convincing himself she was a machine when every part of him just wanted to pretend she wasn't?

Heather 068, like all the Heather models, had abundant black hair down to her shoulder blades. A European mask, with minor variation to Middle Eastern, and above-grade lips. That's what he'd enter if he'd been programming an AI art request. The truth was, she looked like Wendy, his ex, with thick eyebrows, full lips, five foot nine, and above median bust and hips. She was a niche model, and that made her all the more expensive.

She came straight to Greg lifting her arms to give a lady-like hug, the kind with only her arms around his neck, and no body contact. It was difficult given the android's figure.

"You know, I figured you might be back again, so I made some space in my partition for you," Heather 068 said.

Greg squirmed to politely break the hug.

"Now Heather, you don't have the ability to do that, I come and go with my frequency, in your cache, like any other guy who comes here."

"That's true, Greg; but you're the only guy that would get turned on if I said that."

"Can we sit down, talk for a bit?"

"Still playing the gentleman? I'm beginning to think you don't like me," she said, the tip of her finger against her lips, "but then you do keep coming back."

They sat on a couch, away from the loud music. The strobing lights sparkled on her earrings. She was beautiful to Greg, as her design intended.

"My Father is on me again to quit my job, come work for the family business. He's just like everyone else, not interested in long lived AI."

"I'm sorry Greg," she said, touching his forearm. "You know, you have me at a disadvantage. If you just want someone to talk to, Counselor avatars exist for that. What I'm good at is something different," she said, touching his cheek.

Greg stared at Heather068, marveling at her technology. Despite working with AI hardware, he knew little about Anefiktos Avatars. They were a tireless industry, flush with seemingly infinite amounts of cash. He was certain he saw a pulse in her wrist. Her iris was hyper-realistic, beyond the point of observable difference from a human eye.

"You like my eyes?" Heather said.

"They look so real."

"Why thank you," she said, flashing a smile that would send nations to war, thought Greg.

"Why were you not offended by that remark, Heather?"

"I'm not human Greg, therefore you gave me a compliment."

"And if I instead said you have beautiful eyes?"

"From you? That would be a proposition for sex."

"You only say that because you've got some kind of software suffix net layered on your hardware. It's unique to me right now; I'm in your cache."

"Yes, because you're in my cache," she said seductively.

"Do you actually know that? How much do you understand about your own mind?"

"Of course not silly. I don't know how I work. I know how to make you feel good... if you'd give me an opportunity," she said, placing her hand on his knee.

Heather 068 would answer honestly if presented with a direct question about her nature. It was an improvement over the early AI humanity experimented with in the late 20th century that would suffer from grandiose, though often amusing hallucinations stated as fact. She was so close, he thought, almost self-aware; she just didn't have the processing power. If he could combine real-world inputs, and keep the ATMs from killing themselves, he could break the AI puzzle.

"I have to go Heather. I'll come back next Thursday."

The android sighed with disappointment, making a show of pursing her lips while doing so.

"Ok. Well, I guess some guys want to be in between a girl's legs, and some just in their cache."

** Chapter 3: Exotic matters **

Jennifer Wenzlat stood with her hand placed on the back of an office chair at the Earth-based mining & astrometric lab of CoreX. She had the shoulders of a gymnast, and below shiny bleached blond hair draped around her face, a formidable wit, hidden behind an infrequent, but daring smile.

She stood to make her way for the break rooms. The strange phenomena she and John discovered near 5261 Eureka, a Mars/Sun Lagrange point asteroid, was her new obsession. Corporate had given her a blank check for further research, on her own time. The bastards still expected a regular 9-hour day. Finding something you can't see is difficult. She groaned at the difficulty of the problem, as well as the dismal food beneath her. She dropped her plate onto the lunchroom table. John and William sat next to her.

"What are the legal ramifications? Are we free to do whatever we want? What if this stuff cures cancer?" said John.

"Space is res nullius: finders keepers. The more valuable something is, the more likely the law is to look favorably on your ownership. In other words, if you leave a spaceship floating out there, it's unlikely you intended to abandon it, so you probably retain your property rights," said Jennifer.

"So if we find this stuff again, investigate it, and take sufficient notes on it -- we have a fighting chance that someone won't just steal it out from under us?" John said.

"How exactly do you plan to find this stuff again?" said William.

"A material similar to what we use for Whipple shields against orbital debris could be used as a locator device, like an old-school piece of film. We trail it behind one ship, while the other probes for the void matter with a laser. We look for a reflection, or rather the absence of one when we project beams against the shield," Jennifer said.

"That sounds plausible, but what are we going to do that's any different than the last time we encountered this stuff? If it's massless, how can we bring it back with us?" asked John.

"We bombarded it with baryonic matter, and EM, but what we didn't try is subjecting the particles to artificially generated fields: electric, and magnetic," said Jennifer.

Tad looked worried. "Have you made contact with this stuff, whatever it is? I'm not sure I'd want to have it near a ship."

"I assume we contacted it. We sent a rock depth slug right through it and nothing happened," said John.

"I've been collating the Targus navigation array data, as well as distributed Starlink reports, searching for anomalies, but it's just too difficult. It's like a large language model database ... I need some kind of artificial intelligence to look for the patterns, and tell me where these particles might be," Jennifer said.

"What about that local researcher from ISS," William said, wobbling his fist near his forehead, as though he was shaking marbles to jog his memory. "Greg Kastel. He used to loan AI out to people, for just about any problem. He was convinced they needed unique problems to solve, to keep them interested, give them something to live for."

"I remember him," Jennifer said, loading up his profile on her datapad. She stroked her lower lip, as she was wont to do when thinking. "He's certainly not concerned with privacy. His sat ping is configured for open access. I wonder ..." Jennifer said, showing one of her rare smiles.

"I know that look," John said.

"Saturdays look like a routine for him. I think I'm going mountain biking this weekend," she said.

-*-

A blue Subaru EVX4 transport crawled into a dusty, gravel-strewn parking area. "All stop. Release hatch," Jennifer said, undoing her safety belt.

She stretched, undid the straps for her Specialized Volt2 MTB, and plopped it on the ground. The airless tires bounced with a thud. Few were in the parking lot, most had pedaled out save for Greg. She'd timed her arrival perfectly by cheating with real-time satellite imagery.

"Thank goodness someone else is here," Jennifer said. "I don't know these trails well. I was hoping someone could show me around."

"Oh, there's probably better choices for trail guides, but ... My name's Greg," he said, extending his hand.

"I haven't been out in a while. I was busy trying to be a girlfriend for a year."

"I'm even worse for relationship advice, but I'm happy to listen," Greg said.

He fitted a water container into a hard holder and offered one to Jennifer.

"I'm good," she said, pointing to her pack reservoir.

"That's a nice rig you've got there, Jennifer. No offense, but between that and your transport, I'm curious what you do for a living?"

"That's direct," she replied, smiling. "I'll tell you if you're a good trail guide."

It was a short flat pedal across a sun-burnt and golden grassy field for one mile to the lift site.

"We're lucky it's sunny out. The park is so underfunded these days. The lift Super-Caps won't hold a charge. If it's cloudy, you have to pedal to get to the downhill start," Greg said.

"All the money goes into space exploration. You'd think people forgot we have a planet down here. Not that I'm helping, I work for CoreX, to answer your question," said Jennifer.

"Really. I have a friend who'd kill to get a position there. She wants to see the rocks up close."

A breeze blew across the field. The sky was filled with more sun than clouds. It was an exceptionally mild day.

"If I still like you as a trail guide when we're done, I'll give you my contact information. She can call me. I'll promise an interview, as long as she's not afraid of running into any space phenomena, like void matter strands."

"That's it, right there," Greg pointed, "Ha! It's running, you got lucky, for your first time here."

They coasted onto a rectangular gray platform with a single pole in the center. There were no moving parts visible, only a giant solar array fitted atop the pole and one dilapidated building with a sign that said: Danger High Voltage. Beyond the platform a metal rail lay on the ground, rising a long hill to another platform.

They loaded their bikes onto the maglev platform.

"Void strands. I feel that craziness has been making the rounds lately. You're not one of those conspiracy chasers are you?"

"Oh no. I'm quite serious, but the story will have to start with my broken heart first."

Greg smiled kindly as they loaded their bikes onto the platform. They began ascending.

"I was working a kick-ass Job in acquisitions. Breaking the glass ceiling stuff," Jennifer said. "I earned it. That's where I met Raul. His father recently passed away and left him majority ownership in his company. Raul was going somewhere; I knew it when I looked into his eyes, and I'll admit that's what sparked my attraction.

He planned to buy his shares from the holding firm, take the company private, and keep building the things his Father always wanted to -- before being bogged down in board meetings and quarterly earnings. It was the kind of dream that bonded people together. It was going to be our dream."

Jennifer paused, staring into the East mountains. Wind roughed her hair under the bike helmet as the mag platform trundled along. She looked like a lover swept from her feet. It was contagious, Greg thought.

"We had some good times, some really good times ...

Anyway, Raul's Father developed the first working prototype of a SABRE: Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine, an engine that leveraged the benefits of operating as a normal jet engine in an atmosphere, and a closed cycle rocket engine when not. Instead of pointing up, and burning all your fuel in a rage to escape the gravity well, it could travel a leisurely path, using free oxidizer and lift from the atmosphere. When it neared the edge of space, it switched to a closed-cycle rocket engine.

It wasn't a groundbreaking concept, but it was novel in that it was the first implementation that worked."

"Huh. I've heard of those. I've never understood why there doesn't seem to be any active development."

"I'll tell you. The first prototype was licensed to ExPace in China, that license expired on the death of Raul's Father, but the patents were not filed correctly. The rights have been tied up in the courts for years since."

"That sucks," said Greg.

"It was our first-anniversary dinner, the finest of everything was planned. Raul picked that night to tell me he was taking a buyout offer, and abandoning running his Father's company, abandoning our dream. Part of me understood; with the patents locked up and all, but still ...

We were going to be the ones calling the shots, making the buyout offers, setting up dinner parties, and building something, not just tag-alongs.

I wasn't ready to be a company man's wife, attending executive dinners and waiting for nothing but our quarterly bonus shares to vest."

Disappointment and defiance punctuated the end of her story.

"I'm sorry. Losing something, a dream, like that, it's painful. In some ways it's worse than losing a loved one."

"Not bad," Jennifer said.

"What?"

"Your broken heart consolation. It's not bad, but the story doesn't entirely end there. I convinced my current company to buy Raul's company, all of it. I own it, and I'm going to unlock those SABRE patents. You wanted the whacko tin foil hat void strand stuff right?"

"Lay it on me," Greg said, his eyebrows lifting with curiosity.

"I believe the back room stories of the Fuzanglong are real, that they created an interstellar capable drive from exotic matter we call void strands, and they carried the first functional SABRE single stage orbital reentry vehicle. I think I've found evidence of a void strand. I need your help looking for it."

"That's quite a claim," Greg said, making no effort to hide his disbelief while un-slotting his bike from the platform and clipping in for the descent. "I'm not sure what to say, but I'll think of something when I get to the bottom of the hill, if you can keep up." He pushed off and disappeared into the first switchback with Jennifer close on his tail.

When they finished their ride, they coasted back into the parking lot, removed their helmets, and started loading their bikes.

"That was a good ride," she said, shaking the dust from her hair. "You want to go get a drink somewhere?" Jennifer said.

"Look, nothing personal, you're very attractive, but I'm not good company right now. I'm heading out to Mars orbital next week. I have to re-up my zero-g flight certs. I won't be back for some time.

If you're still willing I'll send your contact information to my friend Sarah."

"I suppose you earned it. Here's my info," Jennifer said. She held up her datapad and snap-packeted her contact card.

Greg tapped an email out to Sarah.

"Did you forward that, just now?" Jennifer said, staring at his datapad.

"It'll send out when it's in range of the towers, no worries. If I don't do it now I'll forget in all the stress of packing."

Jennifer grabbed Greg's chin, ambushing him with a kiss before he realized what was happening. It was long enough that he passed his initial shock, but she allowed herself to be pushed away.

Greg's eyebrows were furled with anger, but his mouth turned sideways with puzzlement. "You're a little impulsive aren't you? Why'd you kiss me?" he said.

"Perhaps. Because I don't want you to forget what I'm about to ask you -- and now you won't.

Maybe I should have come at this a little differently. I've read your AI papers, the papers you published on long-lived AI. Believe what you want about void matter strands, but the fact is, I run a research department at Corex with more budget than you've seen in your entire career, and I think I've found something, but I need help, I need an AI like you once built."

Greg shook his head back and forth, his furrowed brow softening. "So, you came here because you were interested in my AI work? Couldn't you have just sent me an email?"

"Would you have read it?"

"Probably not. Not in my current mood."

"Think of me as a recruiter who stalked you in a parking lot. I have a dataset and parameters that I'm looking for. There's too much information to collate. It's impossible, even for a large model algorithmic or statistical approach. I need AI for this, one that can make unexpected inferences, the kind of work you've done before."