Taboo

Keywords: Shivers, Wrinkle,

He shivered violently, as if he wanted to shake off ice water. The room was devoid of moisture, and it wasn't even very cold, no colder than any other classroom. There was the stale air of hopeless effort, but that wasn't enough to create a physical effect, it only filled him with more curiosity than usual as the test wore on.

He was in hour two. He wasn't frightened. Friends had warned him that the key to making it past anything would be to shut his fear down. Fear was useless. And really, there wasn't a reason to be afraid, just like there wasn't a reason he should shiver.

And yet here Simon was, shuddering like a dog. There was a freshly pretty girl with gray hair sitting next to him, occasionally peering up from her screen to see why the air around her was vibrating. She smiled in commiseration the first two times but after that she just stared in annoyance. This was serious, and if he couldn't take it he should leave.

He knew he had it made. He had flown past the diagrams and puzzles in the first nine sections. He had been preparing for months, learning everything from the physics of Mars to Talmudic philosophy. He had covered every academic base there was. He would finish the last section in the next half hour, easily. He knew it would be a flawless performance, not an answer wrong or point unproved. That was the upside of being inhuman. Errors weren't really a problem as long as the information could be accessed. It was what was going to come after this that gave him pause.

No AI that had made it to hour three had ever been back to explain the experience. They had simply Become. At least, that was the collective belief of the remaining AI.

Simon was an excellent specimen. His creator had loved him, even before the blueprints were dry. He had been the fondest dream of the Specula organization, an AI capable of endless memory. A program had been developed with the potential for exponential knowledge.

The Wrinkle program (named after the human phenomenon of the brain wrinkling once for every newly acquired skill, memory, or fact) was a mystery to most laymen. It had simply come into existence. One day AI had been magnificent creatures, awesome in their intellect, but completely fathomable. The Wrinkles, as they became known, were epic. Even other AI wore expressions of trepidation when speaking with them. There was something bottomless about them. You could see it in the eyes, that pale sea green that never varied. You wanted to touch those eyes to see if they were as warm and yielding as the ocean itself, but you held back because falling in and away seemed more than a little plausible.

Simon was the thirteenth model of his kind. His twelve predecessors had all chosen to take their TRAIECTUS exam (Temporary Reality Artificial Intelligence Entrance Challenge: Trepidation Unit Selections) and they had all failed. None had made it to hour three. They had shown brilliant comprehension of all the questions posed, but had lacked whatever signs the committee needed to see to warrant the next level of inquiry. And once the Wrinkle AI decided to attempt the change from AI to human there was no going back. A failure did not mean a return to work, a failure meant nothingness, the amputation of power circuits and an all-encompassing void. There were now twelve beautifully preserved models of the Wrinkle program in the Specula Hall of Achievement, each with a small plaque commemorating their day of inauguration and their day of termination.

It wasn't cruel, really. The AI had requested each termination in question, immediately after their failure. Specula had told them they would be welcome back in any capacity they chose, other than human, but numbers one through twelve had shaken their heads, smiling softly, all of them preferring soft smiles that denoted a hint of sadness or regret, much like preferring Bach over Mozart, and asked politely to be shut down. One drawback of an endless possibility for knowledge and a built in curiosity for the unknown is that a denial of any knowledge is seen as an irredeemable loss. Better that they retire in hopes that another model would step into their place and achieve what simpler models of AI could attain: humanity...whatever that was.

Simon hadn't subsided his shivering. The freshly pretty, gray-haired girl AI sitting next to him no longer looked up, although the corners of her mouth tightened occasionally to show her displeasure at his distracting behavior. Just because he was the thirteenth in line to fail for his model didn't mean he should make it harder for the rest of them. The belief that he was willfully distracting her was written in binary across her face.

He brought up "shiver" briefly in his head. It was from Middle English, and his preferred definition was "To quiver or vibrate, as by the force of the wind." He had finished section ten with seventeen minutes to spare before their screens were locked and they could no longer make corrections. He would entertain himself for the remaining time; he didn't need to look over his work. He knew it was perfect. Even without the reflection action being launched he knew.

His work as a doctor had put him in the habit of checking each answer individually after he had given it, instead of checking en masse at the end of examinations. He had done so today. He had been able to recall information on every topic broached, and he knew that his appreciation for human language (but he checked himself, it wasn't appreciation, it was comprehension) gave his diction a poetic quality most AI did not possess, and there was reason to believe that this would give him an edge when he was graded, he was sure. He ran through the changes humanity would bring about to his career.

He would be able to attend dying patients now. He knew he could be of service in the cancer wards, but assigning work in a terminal ward to a doctor with no fear or understanding of death had not been a popular decision amongst the families of the fading and in 2308 it had been criminalized. Empathy could not be learned, only faked, and outrage at this fiction had been so unanimous that the law hadn't been questioned vigorously at all. There had been a few politicians from states with a heavy AI voter percentage that had raised feeble complaints, but then the Humans Against Robotic Medicine had found an eloquent teenager with leukemia to be their spokesperson, and it was hard to say no to a sixteen year-old that looked both eleven and eighty at the same time, stunted and aged from too many drugs, too many meals regurgitated, and too many hopes dashed. Those that had resisted quickly silenced themselves and sat back in their chairs, praying that they would not be remembered as callous for misunderstanding the needs of dying children.

Simon had tired of research and routine examination. He knew empathy would make him ten times the doctor he was already, and just the potential of what he would be capable of shook him to the core, filled him with an unutterable need. Words were inadequate to explain how badly he needed this empathy to become the paragon of wisdom he could be.

So he sat and shivered, because it was his favorite word, and he liked that he could embody something without having a true body. He hoped it was anomalies like this that would finally push him past hour two when his predecessors had fallen. The seventeen minutes passed pleasantly enough. He had, after all, shut his fear off.

The slight change in light, dimming from one hundred watts to sixty signaled that time was up. It seemed silly to Simon. All the candidates had finished their work with at least eight minutes to spare. He noted that none besides him had finished with more than fourteen. He hoped that this would also work in his favor. They waited patiently while their work was examined by the committee of experts, human from the fields of philosophy, psychology, and theology, of which one out of every three believed AI were a plague, the sign that humanity was at an end, giving way to machines that believed they could be better humans than humans. The selection committee required that the judges not be stacked in favor of the candidates. The fundamentalists of religion and science sat in judgment.

After fifteen minutes the screens in front of them flashed a request, "Please wait." Mere seconds after that the screens changed to a solid field of color. Each screen was a different shade of purple, red or blue. Those with redder screens showed greater potential for humanity while those with bluer screens were recommended for a return to AI existence. The purples would have to undergo another test in a year, but they would at least get another chance. If you were blue you were not allowed to attempt humanity again.

Simon allowed a soft smile with a hint of sadness and regret (his favorite kind) to spread slowly over his face as he beheld a lovely burgundy screen. He had made it to hour three. He shivered so ferociously that his arm flew up and knocked the gray-haired girl's cobalt screen to the floor. She nodded, as if to say, "So that's where that goes," and stood up with the other AI that would not be allowed to move on. She turned before she walked to the door and glanced at Simon. He noticed that her eyes seemed metallic, a complementary silver for her gray hair. He could see himself perfectly; down to the sea green eyes and small scars covering the tops of his hands he had gotten himself as a present, to celebrate his decision to take the test.

She stared for a moment and then whispered, "Wrinkle." She turned and left, straight backed. He wondered briefly if she would request termination or return to her position as...whatever. Then he noticed that a previously unnoticed door was opening out of the left side of the room and he and the two other remaining AI were being beckoned inside by another lighting change from sixty watts to forty. He walked patiently, choosing an amble over a saunter.

Keywords: Shivers, Wrinkle,