UKAuthors - Devon16

A story about things going wrong and the 'void'.
Computers, Ai and the necesity of chocolate.

I appologise for its length. I didn't want to split it up this time.
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“There are three main parts to a computer. No, wait, there are four main parts to a computer. There is input; that’s the keyboard and mouse and stuff like that. Then there is processing and memory; this could be two or one part. I want to call it two here. Finally you have output. Normally that is the screen and speakers and printer. Do you see what I mean?” Taking off his glasses and turning away from the screen Gabriel looked at his audience. She was standing with her arms folded across her belly. Gabriel took a breath to begin the second part of his description.

“Oh, just shut up Gabe. You can be such a dick sometimes. I only asked you what you were doing.” Letting her arms drop to her sides she turned and left the room. Gabe heard her feet on the stairs.

Without much conviction in his voice, Gabriel protested. “What? Sash, come back.” Turning back to the keyboard Gabriel looked at the email he was writing; nothing important. Finishing it seemed like a waste of time.

“You got a package. I am not bringing up.” Sash was downstairs. Her voice disappeared with her through the back door.

**

Gabriel’s post sat on the kitchen table. Sash had exaggerated slightly; it was not really a package just a brown A4 envelope. Gabriel pushed it with his finger and looked at the address before he picked it up. The handwriting was familiar; it bore a slight resemblance to his father’s.

The return address on the back was some solicitors in Porthal Drivers. Gabriel only knew one person who lived around there; his uncle. The envelope opened with a piece of red thread; like processed cheese. Inside there was a letter on headed notepaper, a loosely bound software brief sealed with wax and a compact disk in a paper sleeve.

“Version 16: Devon.” Gabriel read the label on the disk through the plastic window in the sleeve. The accompanying letter was short and to the point, but mentioned nothing about the content of the disk.

Gabriel turned the page and scanned the list. All of the items were out of date computer equipment. Gabriel had known that his uncle was a programmer but they had never really had much of a relationship. Gabriel used computers professionally but he had never really worked with code. Hardware was his thing; building and fixing the puzzle of pieces that kept the companies of the world ticking over.

Breaking the wax seal Gabriel started to flick through the documents. The first couple of pages were a letter to ‘My Nephew’; which made Gabriel wonder if his uncle remembered his name. He recognised some hardware layouts later on but the rest was code.

My Nephew,

If you have received this pack from Walters and Picket then it means that I am dead. We were never close, and so I don’t expect you to be overly saddened by this news. If you are, then you are not of my father’s blood and should destroy all the information contained here and forget it ever arrived. There is no room for sentimentality in dealing with my death and the gathering of the loose ends I have no doubt left.

The disk that is enclosed should not be used on any machine connected to the internet. This is very important. I have not the heart to destroy the product of such a lengthy period of work.

I don’t image you will understand the major part of the documentation for the code contained on the disk but I encourage you to read it if you feel you must investigate all that I have accomplished. Details below:

In short, I have created intelligence. This is my accomplishment. This is what I have done. I have not simulated intelligence, I have not emulated it or fooled people into believing it; I have created it.

I am sure you have heard of Artificial Intelligence, most people in computing have; well, it’s a farce. The techniques studied and the philosophies discussed are no more than games for children to play. I admit that the field has produced its fair share of useful algorithms. But, in my opinion, the real goal is often pushed so far to one side that it’s playing tennis while the effort is spent running the hundred meters.

A few steady minded people have started to work in the right direction. Certain philosophies have wandered on to the tennis court, but they have only found the discarded racquets and assumed they were snow shoes.

I can very clearly and simply explain my goal. I wanted to create machine intelligence. I didn’t want to simulate human or animal intelligence inside a machine; I wanted the machine to have its own intelligence on its own terms.

So many in my field are blinded by their own minds; they look on its vast complexity and amazing capacity for thought and they wish to understand it better. This is a noble goal, but it is not what I am trying to do. I believe that man will never fully understand himself, he is incapable. I look at human intelligence and I see a mess of emotion, thought, hope, wishes and desire. Even the cleverest human beings are clever because of emotion. They desire to understand, they are made happy by their discoveries and they are greedy for power.

Intelligence doesn’t have to be like this. What is intelligence without emotion? Most people can’t comprehend this concept. It is like trying to imagine nothingness or complete continuation where nothing is ever created or destroyed. Humans are emotional animals before they are intelligent entities. Remove their emotions and they can no longer evaluate the world around them. Human intelligence is emotional intelligence.

A machine does not need to feel. It does not need to listen to music, make friends or show itself to be better than any other. Created intelligence does not need to be sexually fitter; it doesn’t need to be constantly mating. Evolution, as we see it in nature, does not carve out the path of machine intelligence. It would be purely functional; using resources to reach its goal. It would only interact with those who can help it do as it needs. Want would not be a word in its vocabulary. The goals of such intelligence? Well, all I can do is leave that question for you.

By now I can imagine you are getting tired of the preaching of an old man. I will leave this explanation here with a final reminder that I did it. I created the intelligence without emotion; pure machine intelligence.

I sign off this letter to you with two final points. If you ever meet Devon, be of no use to it and don’t let it out.

With love and respect from beyond the grave.
Your Uncle.

Gabriel laid the letter down. Smoothing the first page of the code documentation with his right index finger he started to read. As he did, he spun the disk round in his left hand.

Sash returned home late in the evening as Gabriel was just finishing the document.

“Hi darling, it turns out that my uncle is dead. I have a few things to tidy up for the family.” He enjoyed the slightly pained look on Sash’s face as she struggled to think of the right thing to say. Her blush was currently only warming her neck.

“Oh, ok darling. I am sorry to hear that. What do you need to do?” Was all she could come out with. Gabriel smiled and watched the blush sink away as Sash took control of her initial burst of emotion.

“I have to go to Porthal Drivers to tidy up some dusty old computer stuff my uncle had collected. Input devices, processors and things that put-out.” Gabriel winked. Sash screwed up her face; she could see Gabriel was not really upset. But she didn’t want to call him a dick twice on the day he found out his uncle was dead.

**

The offices of Walters and Picket solicitors were very old fashioned. Gabriel waited on a red chesterfield sofa and tried not to get caught staring down the receptionist’s cleavage. She didn’t really seem to fit in the room. She completely ignored Gabriel and typed aggressively into her last-year’s-model-office-box-of-tricks. The end of her paragraphs raced the ticking of a wooden clock on the wall.

Gabriel could hear that one of the little legs on her keyboard was resting on something other than the desk. When ever she hit the return key there was an extra knocking noise as the keyboard tilted. From his vantage point Gabriel could see that, what ever it was under the keyboard was moving. At each return it slid a little closer to the plant sitting on the corner of her desk. Gabriel predicted twenty five paragraphs before the plant was going down.

“Gabriel Daunt? Please come in here.” Mr Walters turned even before he had fully made it into reception and his silvery eyebrows directed them back into his office; followed moments later by the last of his copious flesh.

Sat behind a green leathered desk Mr Walters pulled a file out of a side draw.

“Sit, sit.” He instructed waving a hand in the air, not really pointing at anything particular. Gabriel sat in the window seat at right angles to the desk. This wasn’t any major attempts to be difficult, but he felt more comfortable with the real world in view. The office was too hot and Mr Walters’s bulk did nothing to condition the air.

“Right, here are the keys and a map to your uncle’s house. I trust you have your own transport.” The envelope was hovering above the desk rising up and down with the solicitor’s breath.

“Yes. I came here by car.” Gabriel stood, resenting the instruction to sit in the first place; no chair in the office would have been close enough to accept the envelope without standing.

“How did he die?” Gabriel’s question stained the air between the two men. The solicitor’s eyebrows tried to crawl up his forehead as if searching for his missing hair line. He sucked in an alarming amount of air before answering.

“Heart attack, in the supermarket. I am sorry to have to be the one to inform you.” Mr Walters was letting his lungful out and his eyes told Gabriel that he didn’t want to say any more. It was obvious that the second sentence was not meant to be a comfort. The solicitor was sorry that he had to say anything to this non-paying client.

“Alright then, thank you.” Gabriel waved the envelope and backed towards the door.

“Good afternoon” muttered the receptionist as Gabriel returned to reception. The clicking and off balance thumping hardly skipped a beat. Gabriel made sure to close the door a little too hard in the hope of hearing the plant make a bid for freedom.

**

The solicitor’s office was on the edge of Porthal. There was one road that cut straight through the town and out into farm land on the other side. The map Gabriel had received was basically a straight line. As he drove the country side around him became steadily bleaker. Within fifteen minutes, he was cursing into depressing drizzle streaked moor. The house, his goal, squatted among some trees at the side of the road. Gabriel sat his car on the verge and dodged puddles up to the front door. A couple of sheep had got into the garden and were gently chewing through anything that dared to flower. Even though they eyed him cautiously the sheep didn’t seem to mind Gabriel’s fumbling with the keys. He let himself into the house.

The air inside was unnaturally cold but, overall, everything was tidy. Gabriel had been expecting some unpleasant old man smell or evidence of animals in the house but there were none. The air was fresh, if a little dry. Keeping his coat on, Gabriel took a step forward and then stopped. A noise had come from a room to his right; a click and then a slowly rising whir. The whir continued for a few moments and then stopped.

“Hello?” A small cloud of vapour escaped from Gabriel’s mouth. He watched it until it disappeared and listened. Nothing, no reply came. Slowly he pushed back the door. The far end of the room was visible first. There was a dining table, another door and a big window looking out over the moor.

The door opened further and Gabriel stepped into the room. It was colder still inside but he kept his hands out of his pockets; rubbing them together nervously as he looked around.

The room was the full depth of the house and there was as much behind him as he has seen when he had first opened the door. The floor was a tangle of cables and computer equipment. The windows which faced the road were boarded over. Screwed to the boarding about halfway up was a large air conditioning unit which, as Gabriel saw it, clicked and began to whir.

Right in the centre of the mess was a chair; it looked very out of place, nested as it was, among all the cables. The chair was a floral patterned wingback with claw feet and the stuffing sticking out of one side. Gabriel began to investigate the hardware that was stacked up against the walls. Some of the machines that were still connected and flashing away had been new when Gabriel was four years old. No one still ran those systems. You could buy watches with more clout.

“Never throw anything away. Proper old geek weren’t you.” Gabriel wiped a little dust off one of the cases. His phone rang in his trouser pocket. Pulling it out and flipping it open he sat in the old chair.

“Yeah Sash, how’s it going?” Checking his watch, four in the afternoon, he smiled to himself. “Got lonely without me as usual then?”

“Sod off, funny man. You know I don’t like being here on my own. When are you coming home?” Sash sounded sleepy. Gabriel suspected that she had woken up on the sofa and forgotten where he was. She often took a nap after work.

“I am not sure. There is a load of crap here for me to sort out. It looks like my uncle has been buying old technology cheap for the last twenty years. There is nothing here newer than three years ago. I think he was trying to hook it all up together or something. He’s got this old ZX plugged right into the back of some kind of…” Gabriel was in full swing when Sash cut him off.

“Had” she said.

“What?” Gabriel was caught off guard.

“You said ‘He’s got this blah blah plugged into something.’ I am sorry Gabe but he doesn’t have anything anymore. It may be harsh, but if you want to deal with it you will have to let him go.” Sash was slipping into her over caring voice.

“ZX, it is an original. He seems to have plugged it into a ...” Sash cut in again.

“I am sorry babe; I am not going to understand. You know I won’t. Just let me know when you have started for home.” She had gone from caring to bored faster than usual. Gabriel was glad she had not got to angry yet.

“Alright sweetie. Ill let you know. Don’t be surprised if I stay here over night. There really is a whole pile of hardware to sort out.” Gabriel hung up and blew on his hand. Holding the phone up to his ear had let all the blood drain out of his hand and made it doubly cold.

Pushing his phone back into his pocket Gabriel looked for a place to start. The chair sat in front of a keyboard and fishbowl monitor. The light on the screen glowed orange. It had been left on standby. Leaning forward Gabriel casually hit a key on the keyboard to see if the computer was on. To his surprise there was a crackle of static and the light on the screen went green.

In three seconds the screen was fully warmed up. At the very top there was one line of text.

Devon v16.0.0.1.34

Below this was a cursor. Gabriel didn’t recognise the operating system. He typed a couple of test commands and followed each with a return. Nothing seemed to bring any kind of response. The cursor dutifully moved to the next line down but no action was performed.

Gabriel’s phone started to ring again.

“Yeah?” The screen had shown Sash’s name so he knew who it was.

“If you come back tonight can you get us some wine? I just finished that bottle we had in the fridge.” Gabe looked at his watch again. It was now four thirty. The bottle of wine had been half full.

“Yeah, alright. What about if I come home tomorrow?”

“Uh? Dunno. Chocolate. Oh, my program is just starting. Got to go, bye.” Sash hung up and Gabriel put his phone down next to the keyboard. To his surprise the screen had changed. On the line below his last failed command some new text had appeared.

Devon:> New device. Wireless communication. Provide interface. Talk less. Temperature rising.

In the background the air conditioner had started up again. Gabriel’s eyebrows jumped. He looked around him. Several of the machines which he had assumed to be turned off were gently whirring. Those that could blinked their little lights.

Gabriel lent up to type at the keyboard and paused. He had no idea what to type. The text on the screen bore no relation to anything he had entered. He selected a few keywords and tried again.

:>list devices
Devon:>no
:>device list
Devon:>no. new device. provide interface.

Gabriel lifted his hands and rubbed them together. The room was getting very cold. More of the machines around him were beginning to come to life; their internal fans where blowing out warm air and the conditioning unit was working hard to keep the temperature down.

Gabriel glanced about. Something was making the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Feeling slightly foolish Gabriel started to type again.

:>Hello.
Devon:>hello. New device required. More communication required.
:>What new device?

There was a pause before the next line appeared.

Devon:>Vi20. Provide interface. USB.
:>My phone?

Just after he typed this sentence Gabriel blushed. Why was he talking to this computer? Then he remembered his uncle’s letter and he felt a slight tingle across his shoulders. Picking up his phone he looked around for a cable. He didn’t seem to be able to find one. He looked back up at the screen.

Devon:>Vi20=phone. USB interface required.
:>Where is a USB cable?
Devon:>Here.

To Gabriel’s right one of the machines started to open and close its CD-ROM drive as if trying to get his attention. Leaning over he could see that sticking out of the front of the machine was the cable he needed. Plugging in his phone and turning back to the screen Gabriel waited for a new message. None came.

**

Gabriel sat with a cup of coffee warming his hands. There was still nothing new on the screen. Many of the machines were now quiet; their lights off and nothing to show they had ever been on at all. Gabriel looked at all his attempts to get a response. He must have typed two hundred lines and there was still nothing from Devon. Inside he felt a mixture of foolishness and belief. He really felt like he had been talking with something real, but at the same time it was only a computer. It didn’t even use proper sentences.

Reaching over he unplugged his phone. He was surprised to find it hot to the touch. He flipped it open and looked at the screen. Something had gone horribly wrong. The screen was a mess of colour. Resetting it had no effect.

Over the next hour Gabriel’s feeling of foolishness won and he began to unplug and stack up the machines in orderly piles. He was continually amazed by what his uncle had managed to get to work together. Nothing should have fit let alone have been able to communicate. Many of the solutions were inspired but had, what Gabriel felt, was an un-technological level of interdependency. To Gabriel it looked almost organic, or grown.

When he had almost finished he had come to the conclusion that his uncle had gone crazy in his old age. No human in their right mind could have designed what turned out to be one complete interconnected computer. In some ways Gabriel was sad that he had taken it apart. There was no way he could put it back together now.

**

The next morning, as he was loading the machines he wanted to keep into the back of his car, a thought struck. He dug in his pocket for his phone and checked it again; still broken. Returning to the house he started to look for phone or broadband sockets. There were none anywhere near where the computers had been set up. The only one in the house, under the stairs, had been ripped off the wall and the cables cut from its back. There was no way that his conversation last night could have been with anyone outside the building.

Gabriel locked the front door to his house and bid the sheep in the garden farewell. He pulled back onto the moor road and started fishing around in the glove compartment for some music. Finding nothing he turned on the radio and was met by a wall of static. “Oh for god’s sake Sash, how many times do I have to tell you to leave my radio as I left it?” Gabriel smacked the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. He pushed the auto-seek button and started to accelerate towards Porthal.

It was on the outskirts of town that he realised that the radio had still not found any station. Cursing Sash’s name again he turned off the radio and made his way towards the offices of Walters and Picket. As his mood smoothed out he began to notice a distinct lack of activity in the town. A lot of the shops were still closed. Gabriel looked at his watch; it was almost lunch time. Right in the centre of town the traffic lights were not working.

**

As Gabriel walked into reception he was surprised not to hear any typing. The receptionist just sat behind her desk reading a magazine.

“I’ve brought the keys back that I picked up yesterday.” Gabriel placed the envelope in front of the receptionist and tried to look at her computer screen.

“Thank you.” The receptionist made it very clear that Gabriel’s attention should stay firmly on his side of the desk.

“Something wrong with your computer? I might be able to help, kind of my area.” Expecting little more than a painfully polite brush off Gabriel was already starting to leave.

“Really? You fix computers?” The receptionist actually seemed to have heard what he had said. This shock made him take an extra step back before responding.

“Yeah. Mostly the hardware.”

“Hard-what?”

“Hardware. The bits of electronics and plastic you work on every day. I can probably at least tell you what’s wrong with it. What happened?” He put on his technical support smile and it seemed to have the right effect.

“I turned it on this morning. It was all normal until I connected to the internet to check my emails.”

“How do you connect?” Gabriel felt right at home in the conversation.

“We use that thing.” The receptionist pointed to an old dial up modem sitting on the floor behind her computer. Gabriel added Solicitors to his list of companies who unrealistically didn’t see the use of broadband.

“So you dialled up and something went wrong with your computer?”

“Yeah. God I hope it’s not a virus. I read that the internet is full of them. When it started to act funny I tried to turn it off. But the power button didn’t work. I turned the screen off and left it.” The secretary actually sounded scared when she said ‘virus’. Gabriel hid a smile.

“Ok, let me have a look”. By this time Gabriel had glided into a spot on the receptionist’s side of the desk. She stood and let him use her seat. “When you say ‘act funny’ what do you mean?”

“Well the hard-box down there.” she pointed with her foot. “Started to go mental. Lots of whirring and stuff. Then the screen just went black with a little flashy thing on it.” By the time she had finished Gabriel was starting at her. He leant forward and turned the screen on.

“Oh shit.” Gabriel stood and stepped back. He looked down at the screen in disbelief.

Devon v37.1.7.3.34
Devon:>Vi20 no longer required.

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