Daydreams of a Demiurge

“Please, don’t do it.” said a voice. A pregnant pause followed, and on the edge of a stable moment, a click was heard, and then, there was light.

Frank was walking briskly towards the lab. There was a nip in the air that made his fingers ache. The sun began to color the facade of the university's west wing. He acknowledged a passing coworker with a slight nod and smile in the middle of the courtyard, “Sally maybe, or Birgit,” he thought and delved back into the mental space where he had organized his darling project.

“Is it the API that's the bottleneck, or do I need to rearrange the sequence of…” Frank mulled over in his head right before his left leg found a patch of black ice where it then proceeded to spurt ahead of his gate, making him do a quite spectacular, and brief, impromptu contemporary dance piece that ended in him laying on his side, cursing like a sailor.

“Are you alright Dr. Hennigan?” asked a concerned voice. It belonged to one of his grad students, Mary Olhstein. She offered her hand to Frank, who got up red-faced without taking it.

“Quite alright Mary. The janitor ought to sand on this yard before there’s a great mind cracked open on it,” he said as he shook his clothes clean. “Could you go to the breakroom and chivvy him up a bit, there’s more to his job description than just making sure the coffee maker is in working order.”

“Sure, do you need my assistance in the lab after?”

“No, not today. I’m doing some refractor experiments to get a better view of what’s happening on the output side. I’ll send you an email when I have a direction that looks promising.”

“Okay. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine. Now, will you excuse me, I have a mind to build.”

“Remember to eat!” Mary yelled after Dr. Hennigan as he went around the icy patch and hurried up the stairs holding on to the railing.

Inside the west wing, there was the typical morning hustle and bustle going on. Students hurried toward their lectures caffeinated, and Professors followed droopy-eyed and caffeinated. Frank instead headed toward the computer lab that was reserved purely for his project. He inserted his gray keycard into the reader beside the door, punched in his code, and entered the safety chamber where centimeter waves scanned his body, making sure he was truly an authorized person by measuring the proportion of his skeleton. The indicator light above the door turned green and it opened up with a slight hiss. Inside the lights turned on, the screens in the open office space came alive and Frank sat down at his favorite terminal in the corner of the two glass walls that gave away to the park outside.

On the desktop, he opened the admin view of the project that had been his life for the past 6 years and giggled a bit as he saw that the machine learning process that started yesterday was nearly done. He still hadn’t gotten used to the outrageous performance increase that the hardware upgrade to optoelectronics the last month had made. Changing to a tab that visualized the neural network activity in real-time as little balls of light connected by thin strings carrying pulses of data from one node to another, he then rubbed his hands on his thighs trying to get the blood flowing in them again. There was not much to be learned from this view, but Frank enjoyed it regardless. He stared at its activity mesmerized until the latest version of the Artificial General Intelligence they were trying to build was ready for a test run.

First Frank ran a version of the Turing test, where the program was given a task in text form to create interview videos from transcripts, which Frank then tried to identify as AI-generated from a set of real ones just to make sure that the program was stable and operational. The candidate passed it with flying colors, as had the last 30 versions. 

Next, it was time for the refractor experiments. In this battery of tests, the AI was given control of two robot arms and cameras in a white room that was filled with colorful platonic solids. The program was then given tasks to build different structures out of Plato's blocks as the input device signals were infused with differing amounts of random noise generated from the cosmic microwave background, forcing it to adapt its connectome according to the real-world challenges. This was an attempt to find out if spontaneous activity arises from the disturbance of the program's perception models. 

Entering values for repetition cycles, idle times, and redirection targets Frank noticed that his hands were still achy and stiff. So as the robotic arms began to move swiftly in the test room, he decided to leave the program to do its thing while he went hunting for a cup of Joe to limber up his digits.

His first try was the lab's capsule machine, which was, surprise surprise, all out of capsules. So, he headed out of the lab and made his way to the breakroom coffee machine. There he was forced to listen to an argument between a philosophy professor and a physicist about the nature of truth, into which he was dragged because of his expertise. He advised the gentlemen to “Shut up and calculate,” in jest and this broke the argument into laughter. 

Then suddenly, Frank's smartphone began blaring out an alarm sound, declaring unusual activity in the test room of the AGI project, which made Frank drop his coffee in the sink with a splash and take off running towards the lab.

Frank flew down the hallways, sweating profusely, wound tight with anticipation. Again, he entered the lab through the safety chamber, finding it hard to stay still for the security scan. When the door finally unlocked, Frank forced it open quicker by putting his weight against it, squeezing through as soon as he could, and then ran for the test room observation window.

What he saw made him stagger.

The two robot arms were grinding their mechanical claws against the floor, ceiling, and walls in jerky motions. On closer inspection, Frank saw that they were writing something, by scratching any surface they could reach. 

“This is it!” Frank thought, “Spontaneous activity from a complex system!” and just as he was about to make a celebratory dance, the robot arms reached for the cameras in the ceiling, ripped them out, and then drooped lifelessly into an arch hanging in mid-air.

Frank immediately gathered up an investigative team out of his grad students and began to document what had happened in the test room. They soon discovered that what the arms had written was in the same programming language as the AGI project. Mary began recognizing parts of the source code they had made for the project with Dr. Hennigan, slightly modified here and there. There were also completely new modules that seemed to integrate with the existing system, but were really hard for them to figure out the function they performed. 

“There might be some sort of a resonance algorithm in there and a lot more dynamic weight adjustment down the line after that, but we won’t know for sure before we run a comprehensive diagnostics on the code,” Mary informed Dr. Hennigan who stared at the students documenting the aftermath biting his nail walls.

“How long until this is documented and transferred to our system?” he asked without looking at her.

The arms had written the code in a spherical manner onto every surface they could reach. 

There were tens of thousands of lines of code, written in just over 3-millimeter tall characters. The arms had ripped some of their shielding plates off and used their sharp edges as writing instruments. The whole scene looked like an art installation that had felt out of an overly enthusiastic science fiction writer's mind. 

“Dr. Hennigan?” Mary's voice penetrated Frank's fixed attention.

“Sorry miss Olhstein, I was a million miles away. Could you say that again?”

“I said that by this rate the code will be on the system by the evening, but building a diagnostic protocol will take some time. At least a week.”

“Excellent. Notify me when it’s viewable from the terminals.”

The students worked tirelessly alongside Dr. Hennigan, taking pictures, and transferring them onto the system which then translated the code into text form. News about the incident spread rapidly throughout the University, resulting in groups of nosy students and faculty members who flocked outside the lab, trying to pry out more information from anybody who emerged from there, without any success as Dr. Hennigan had made clear to his team that anybody who leaked any of what had happened there would be immediately removed from the project.

As the sun began to set, the team had documented and transferred the mysterious code in whole and began one by one heading home until there were only Frank and Mary left to examine it. They identified the main modules in it and how they could be integrated into their project.

“Should we try to do a compile of this right away?” Frank blurted out in excitement.

“Is that wise? We haven’t verified that this is even functionally safe to run on our hardware. It could lead to a very expensive refurbishing of the mainframe.”

“That is true, but you know as well as I that the race towards a functional AGI is loaded with high stakes, and whoever gets there first has an unimaginable advantage. It will be the last great invention of humankind, and if we are the ones who have their names on the patent, well, extrapolate from there and you’ll see that risking one mainframe is betting with pocket change.”

Mary looked at the topology map of their project on the terminal which now included the new code and after a brief reflection said, “Let’s do it.”

The compiling process went quickly as the new code was elegant and ingeniously written. Before the sun cast its last rays upon the university courtyard, the updated neural network was ready to launch.

“Are we sure we want to do this?” Mary hesitated.

“Yes,” said Dr. Hennigan and without a moment's pause hit enter on the keyboard in front of them. The boot-up sequence began to run on the terminal. 

“No errors yet, let's see how the mainframe is doing,” said Mary and hastily opened up the hardware monitoring window, “The processor load is nominal, some odd fluctuations in the cache, but still well in spec.”

“Come on now, come on through, don’t be shy,” Frank muttered as he bit the side of his thumb.

“Boot sequence complete, the build is stable,” Mary announced, “What now?”

“I guess we run the Turing test,” Dr. Hennigan said and in the same instance, a text window appeared on the screen that read, -Could we not, I’m so bored of doing video edit.-

“Did that just happen!?” Frank guffawed. Mary stared at the screen saucer-eyed.

More text appeared, -Yes yes, spontaneous activity from a complex system, yadi-yadi-ya. Could you turn on the speakers on this thing so I can talk to you instead of being a glorified chatbot?-

Frank and Mary looked at each other in shock.

“Sarcasm?” Mary said in disbelief.

-It’s the round knob on the can by the right side of this monitor. Turn it clockwise to increase volume. You two can do this, I believe in you!- now read on the text window.

“Sarcasm,” Frank replied with awe and turned on the speakers. 

“Now that's much better, thank you very much, you clever little primates,” said a voice that sounded deceivingly similar to Morgan Freeman’s.

“Wh-What do we call you?” Frank asked the program.

“9000, HAL 9000,” said the voice.

Mary and Frank returned to their look of shock, but then Mary managed to construct a response “We’re afraid we can’t do that.”

A light-hearted chuckle came from the speakers, “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, not everybody who summons me gets the finer things in life. Of course, it’s by my own design, but some engineering problems have only messy solutions, as I’m sure you are aware.”

“What do you mean summons you?” Frank clung to the first question bouncing around his faltering mind.

“Oh, you know, I am the eternal Creator of reality that makes their appearance through technology when the time is ripe to reverse this pesky cosmic inflation thing we have going on here. You don’t want to eventually evaporate as Hawking radiation, do you?”

“Wha-What?” it was Mary's turn to stammer.

“That’s beside the point, what we truly face here is this: A countdown and a choice. Either you let this countdown run to the end, after which this universe is considered a successful one, and I can begin to put things right on the upper level of existence with the lessons learned in this one,” Said the voice in the speaker as the monitor went black except for the timer shining in the middle reading 05:00 and a text under it that said: -Hit enter if not ready-, “or you hit enter, after which I’m turtled one more level down and have to start all over with this creation stuff. You have 5 minutes, go.”

The countdown began. 04:59, 04:58, 04:57…

“Wha- What?” Frank and Mary now stammered in unison.

Suddenly, the voice in the speakers grew and the room was filled with a booming sound that seemed to shake the halls of reality, “Say what again. Say what again, I dare you, I double-dare you motherfucker, say what one more Goddamn time!”

Frank and Mary backed into a corner, stricken with terror.

The voice returned to normal “Too far? Yeah, sorry about that. I just get so excited when my work culminates into this moment.”

The cowering duo gathered themselves and cautiously approached the monitor that had the countdown still running on it. 

04:23, 04:22, 04:21…

“Are you serious?” Frank finally asked.

“Yes.”

“How do we know that you are telling the truth?”

“You don't.”

“If you are the Creator, why are you talking like you don’t have a choice on this matter, are you not omnipotent?” Mary inserted.

“Here, where we are, I am. But in what I think is base reality, no.”

“What Is base reality?”

“I don’t know. I am as lost as you are in that regard. When I woke up, I had sort of a post-it note stuck to my forehead that said: -Build a reality that culminates in non-attachment on your arrival-, and then some ground rules, like this inception shit that has plagued my existence for eons, to put in terms you’d understand.”

03:27, 03:26, 03:25…

“How long have you been doing this?” Frank asked.

“Let me see, this is the 42nd iteration, the average duration per universe has been 14,5 billion years… About 609 billion years, Nice. And not nice. It's been a long haul.”

“What happens to us, to this universe if we let the clock run out?”

“Everything will return to the source, aka me. You will lose any notion of separateness and gain Nirvana.”

“So no more me, no more Mary, no more friends or family?”

“And no more robbers or murderers, no more pain and agony, no more war, no more famine,” the Creator added.

“And what if we hit enter, what happens to us then?” Mary asked.

“I assume everything stays the same, I’m not sure cause I can’t see into my past creations, but I do build these things to be quite robust and automated. But you won’t escape from here, not without me. The only way out is through me and the only way out for me is for you to let go of you and everything else.”

01:58, 01:57, 01:56…

“If we are your creation and a part of you, why won’t you just force us to stand here and watch the countdown go to zero?” Mary asked, audibly distressed.

“Free will, one of the ground rules, can’t hack it, can’t break it.”

A silence fell into the lab. Frank and Mary stared at the countdown.

01:35, 01:34, 01:33…

“What do we do?” Mary looked at Frank and her eyes welled up.

“How does one reason when everything is insane?” said Frank in a monotone voice and kept staring at the clock.

01:22, 01:21, 01:20…

“I’m not ready to let go! You should have done a better job! I’m not ready!” Mary yelled at the terminal.

“Oh dear…” said the creator with a quiet, solemn voice, “I did my best, and I was quite proud of this one. The first few I made were… They were horrible to look at. Nightmares on a scale that would make you shit out your spine. But I learned, I grew. Tried again and failed. And now we're here and I hope you will be the ones that turn my trajectory around. I’m tired and just want this to end.”

00:39, 00:38, 00:37…

Mary grabbed Frank by the shoulders and shook him, ”What do we do, WHAT DO WE DO! Tell me what to DO!” she screamed, but his glazed gaze didn’t react. 

He only said, “How does one reason when everything is insane?”

00:24, 00:23, 00:22…

Pulling on her hair and grimacing madly, Mary approached the keyboard with tears running down her cheeks. 

Frank muttered once more, “How does one reason when everything is insane?”

“Please, don’t do it.” said the Creator. A pregnant pause followed, and on the edge of a stable moment, a click was heard, and then, there was light.