Forever Yours
Part II
“How Smart Is a Rock? To appreciate the feasibility of computing with no energy and no heat, consider the computation that takes place in an ordinary rock. Although it may appear that nothing much is going on inside a rock, the approximately 1025 (ten trillion trillion) atoms in a kilogram of matter are actually extremely active. Despite the apparent solidity of the object, the atoms are all in motion, sharing electrons back and forth, changing particle spins, and generating rapidly moving electromagnetic fields. All of this activity represents computation, even if not very meaningfully organized. We’ve already shown that atoms can store information at a density of greater than one bit per atom, such as in computing systems built from nuclear magnetic-resonance devices. University of Oklahoma researchers stored 1,024 bits in the magnetic interactions of the protons of a single molecule containing nineteen hydrogen atoms. Thus, the state of the rock at any one moment represents at least 1027 bits of memory.”
— Ray Kurzweil The Singularity is Near
15
Degrees of Separation
THERE WERE PLENTY of hiccups in the arrangements over the summer. Henry had to get an extra air conditioning unit for the office and install it in the front window. Isobel raised an alarm at the rate they were spending their investment and returned to Pittsburgh to berate Henry and work with Chastity on refining the budget, including exactly how much they could afford for an assistant to Henry.
“I don’t know if I can get any computer pro to work for $25 an hour,” Henry said, shaking his head. “Even at just ten hours a week. I realize we’re all salaried at $1000 a month, but we’re vested in the company.”
“There won’t be a company to be vested in if we don’t get some income to offset these expenses. I can’t believe we’ve been in business for a month and have already spent nearly $50k. We can’t keep going like that.”
“Okay, I get the point,” Chastity said.
“You’d better get it!” Isobel yelled at her. “You won’t have a job much longer if you don’t.”
“Isobel, calm down,” Henry said. “You don’t have the right to threaten another partner with termination. We’ll do our part to keep expenses down. You do your part and pay the fucking bills.”
“Maybe it’s me who should quit,” Isobel shot back. “But then my $250,000 would be worth nothing!”
They’d made it through the upset, but after Isobel left, Chastity dragged Henry to his bedroom and demanded to be fucked into the mattress.
For his part, Henry spent a lot more than ten hours a week working on his projects. He was able to specify what was needed for an optimization app based on his AI patent. His testers had no options regarding how the program ran. A real user would need settings they could use to at least give the illusion they had control. And they would have limited control over what the AI could learn. Still, it needed to ‘look pretty,’ as one of the testers said.
On August nineteenth, Henry went to campus for the opening convocation. It wasn’t required, but students who were in town were encouraged to attend. It seemed like it had been forever since he met Kaitlyn after the convo the previous year. He hadn’t seen her in the spring, as he had resigned from the golf team. He just didn’t have the time to play golf on a team.
He was surprised to see members of his study cohort at the convocation and went out to dinner after the event with Lisa and Josh.
“I didn’t expect to see either of you until next week,” Henry said.
“I never left town for the summer,” Josh said. “I got a summer internship over at Monroe Systems Management. Didn’t pay much but it was a good experience.”
“My dad works there,” Henry said.
“I figured Mr. Pascal was related to you, but I didn’t have much interaction with him.”
“What about you, Lisa? What brings you into town early?” Henry asked.
“I stupidly pledged a sorority last spring and I had to come and act pretty in the Kappa Tau booth to talk to the freshmen this week. I don’t know if living in the sorority house is any better than the residence halls, but it’s temporary,” Lisa said.
“I got a couple more classes taken care of this summer,” Henry said. “Between that and my part time job at the golf course, I didn’t have time for much else.” He didn’t want to mention his other work or the new business. It was still too soon to reveal that to classmates. Several had signed non-disclosures to test his invention, but didn’t know he was behind it.
They compared their upcoming class schedules and determined they would have Machine Learning and Human AI Interaction together. Henry’s other classes in the department were more advanced than either of the others’.
“We should invite Simon and Leonard to join our study group. I’m sure they have a couple of these courses, too,” Josh suggested.
“I’d agree to that,” Lisa said. “As long as Leonard takes a bath occasionally.”
“I hear you,” Henry said. “I’m good with inviting them to join. They’re both really smart and will give us some different perspectives. Is Dan still in?”
“Oh, sure. He’s just not back on campus yet,” Josh said.
“How did you get into Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing?” Lisa asked.
“I’m taking ridiculous loads so I can finish in three years,” Henry said. “I need to be out of here so I can spend full time getting my business up and operating. It’s hard to do while I’m in school.”
“Okay, Boy Genius. That means you should be established and ready to hire me the next year when I graduate,” Josh said.
“It’s not impossible,” Henry said. “I just need to find a boatload of money first.”
“Henry, could I talk to you for a minute in private?” Lisa asked as they left the restaurant. It was in walking distance to the campus, so they headed back that way as Josh left to catch up with some other friends who had texted him to meet.
“Sure. You headed to the sorority house? We can walk that way.”
Henry liked Lisa. She was sharp, a good study partner, and nice looking in his book. She wore her black hair with square-cut bangs and braids. Her round glasses were slightly tinted, probably to compensate for the glare of her computer screen. When they met at the convo, Henry recognized her right away by the clothes she was wearing: a baggy green sweater and rust-colored overalls.
“Hey, you got braces over the summer,” he said. “That sure hurt when I had mine.”
“Yeah. I don’t know why I couldn’t have had these when I was twelve like everyone else. Just don’t look, okay?”
“Okay, but I think they’re kind of cute.”
“You would,” she laughed. “You… don’t mind being seen with me?”
“Why would I? We’re right in the middle of campus.”
“I… wanted to ask you for a favor. It’s no big deal, really. I’m not asking for any kind of commitment, but I don’t have a lot of guy friends,” Lisa said.
“If I can do something for you, I’m happy to,” he said.
“Well, I’m staying over at Kappa Tau for the next month and there’s this… event coming up. I kind of need an escort. If I don’t come up with my own, my big sister will get a random guy from Omega Rho to escort me. I’ve met her friends there and I wouldn’t trust any of them.”
“Just as an… escort to the event?” Henry asked. He winced at the term, thinking automatically of Chastity.
“Dance. It’s the homecoming cotillion. I promise not to be a burden. We don’t even need to stay that long. I just have to be there for the pledge recognition and I need an escort. Then we can just take off and maybe get dinner or something until the event is over and I can slip back to my room without being noticed.”
“Lisa, you’re asking me to the fall cotillion at your sorority?” Henry clarified to make sure he understood.
“Yeah… Never mind. I knew it was a bad idea.”
“Hey! Don’t withdraw the invite, please,” he said. “I think that’s really sweet. Thank you for inviting me. Let’s stop for a cup of coffee and you can tell me all the details. I’d love to take you to the dance.”
They stopped at Ground Rules and ordered drinks, then sat to talk. Homecoming was scheduled for Saturday, September eleventh. It wouldn’t be difficult for Henry to arrange his schedule for a Saturday date. He and Carol had talked only a couple of times over the summer and he was feeling awfully alone now that he lived in his own apartment.
“It isn’t formal,” Lisa said. “You don’t need a tux or to get a flower or anything like that. It’s jacket and tie for guys and dresses for girls. Ugh! I’ll have to wear a dress. I’ll try not to look too ugly.”
“Who thinks you’re ugly? You’re pretty cute.”
“Braces,” she moaned. “My big sister at the sorority nearly had a fit when she saw me.”
“Not even with braces. And when they come off, you’ll really look great.”
“Like, don’t lay it on too thick,” she said. “Thank you for the compliment, I think. I should get back to the sorority. There’s still the Greek festival on the commons tomorrow.”
They walked on and Henry stopped at the door to the sorority.
“I accept, by the way,” he said. “I’d love to take you to the dance.”
“Thanks, Henry. I’ll see you in class on Monday.”
She went in and Henry chuckled to himself at the odd encounter. It would be fun. He was sure. Mostly.
He didn’t really think much more about the dance. He had his work and was trying to decide if a new feature he thought of was an extension of what he had filed or would be a new patent. He needed to talk to Don Harvey and possibly to Professor Jacoby.
He managed to set a time for dinner Tuesday evening, a week after classes started, for Professor Jacoby and Don Harvey to join him at the golf club. Henry described his idea.
“What inspired this?” Jacoby asked.
“I was thinking about how the system could work on a corporate network,” Henry said. “If you have an installation on the server, what devices does it work on? If it’s only on those directly connected to the server, that’s one thing. But there are often devices connected to those devices. Does it automatically install on those as well? And if that device connects to something else, does it automatically go to work there? Sounds more like a virus. So, I’m thinking I need to establish something like degrees of separation from the host install. Like, zero degrees would mean active on the host only. One degree of separation would be to only those devices directly connected to the host. Two degrees would extend to devices connected to the connections. And so on.”
“It’s really a means to limit the effective range of a distributed application,” Don mused. “I can see this as possibly having applications far separate from the optimization app.”
“I agree,” Jacoby said. “Think about privacy. Could a person limit how far information on a website could be spread? That would be huge.”
“Disruptive,” Don agreed. “There are some—shall we say marketing apps? Some that depend on both disseminating and collecting information from several levels. What you call degrees of separation.”
“Have you tried it?” Jacoby asked.
“I installed it as a limiter on the previous app. It can’t affect anything beyond the device that directly installed it. Zero degrees. Then I ran it on my own devices and started thinking I should only have had to install on the server,” Henry said. “I spent a good bit of the summer trying to get it to work right.”
“I think we should file it separately,” Don said. “Don’t even mention the previous patent. It might work with that technology, but it is completely separate.”
“Yeah,” Jacoby said. “And we need to find a suitable testbed for it. Good work, Henry.”
“You must be running up quite a bill with Don,” Jacoby said as he walked to his car with Henry. “I hope he isn’t encouraging you to file patents to keep his bills growing.”
“We settled everything current. We came into some money last spring when I licensed the first patent. Don got five percent of that for negotiating the deal. With the money we got from that deal, we incorporated. Then the company paid me in stock to transfer the other existing four patents. Don got five percent of those shares.”
“He’s still betting on you to make it big then,” Jacoby laughed. “Well, keep me in mind if you need another round of funding. I know some people who would be interested in investing. What is your current share price?”
“When I transfer the new patent, we’ll raise it two cents,” Henry laughed. “That will make it twelve cents a share. Of course, that’s all on paper at the moment. We aren’t public, so we aren’t selling.”
“Like I said, keep me in mind. I think I could arrange a few million when you need it.”
“It will be a while, but thanks. I’ll definitely let you know.”
Henry studied the data from the testers on the optimization app, determining how rapidly the app was collecting user data and improving its performance. The data was all statistical and he didn’t have a view into each computer to capture the learning base. That was frustrating.
He’d used the app on the company server and used the new feature of setting degrees of separation so that any computer that connected directly to the server would also be optimized. He was pleased to have his development computer, personal computer, laptop, and tablet all updated and optimized much more efficiently.
He didn’t consider, however, that the software would automatically transfer to his partners’ computers when they logged onto the server.
The new data for training the AI was much more robust than what was received from any one computer. This was good as far as he was concerned. The AI was learning much faster and still keeping his computer running smoothly and efficiently.
He was in his study when his cell phone rang. He noticed it was Lisa, so he answered immediately.
“Hi there.”
“Oh, good. You’re alive. You missed class yesterday so I didn’t get a chance to confirm that we are still on for tomorrow night. Are you okay?” Lisa said.
“Wow! It’s that time already. Sorry to have been absent yesterday, but I was getting a lot of new data on my computer I wanted to analyze. I kind of stayed up all night. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”
“You’re like, not backing out, are you? I mean, not that I’d blame you. The longer I’m in this house, the lamer this whole sorority thing seems. I never should have pledged in the first place.”
“I suppose there’s no time limit on just saying you aren’t interested in them any longer. Why don’t you at least wait until after the dance tomorrow night so we can go have some fun. I haven’t been out in a long time.”
“You mean that, Henry? You think it will be fun?”
“It’s all in our attitude. We go to have fun. What could go wrong?”
“Um… Do you, like, drink?”
“Sometimes a beer, but not when I’m driving. Last thing I’d need is a DUI while I’m underage. If you want to partake, I’ll look out for you. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t drink so much you puke on me.”
“Hey! I don’t drink. I just know there will be liquor at the party. I didn’t want to get stranded because my date was falling over drunk.”
“We probably should have talked about that up front. Sorry I haven’t been available much this term so far. Just have a lot going on. But it sounds like we’re on the same page. No booze,” Henry said.
“Yeah. It’s funny, you know?”
“What is?”
“I don’t really know all that much about you except what you’re like in class and our study cohort. I talked to my mother and she asked who my date was for tomorrow. She was a Kappa when she was here, which is why I pledged. Anyway, I realized I couldn’t really tell her about my date, because I don’t know much about you.”
“Well, I’m 5'11", black hair or dark enough brown to think it’s black. I’ve got a beard, but try to keep it trimmed and neat. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of my computer, but try to get an hour’s walk in each day—mostly around campus. I shower every day, so I don’t smell too bad, I don’t think,” Henry laughed.
“I know that stuff! At least what you look like. Didn’t know you exercise. I’ve never noticed an unpleasant odor around you. That’s one of the reasons I asked you. You’re kind of the cleanest of our classmates.”
“I guess that’s a pretty good reason. Why else did you ask me?”
“You’re, like, always decent to me. It’s a little weird being the only female of our year in the AI program. I just don’t feel comfortable with most of the guys.”
“As long as you don’t expect me to lie down in a mudpuddle so you can walk across my back in your spike heels, or want me to fight off all your admirers for you, I think you can count on me being decent to you. I can’t treat you to anything fancy. I’m not here to make your real boyfriend jealous. You know. Stuff like that.”
“You’re kind of a dope, aren’t you? As if I cared about money or have a boyfriend. But I am using you to be my date to an event so I don’t get passed around to a bunch of frat guys.”
“I’m down with that. It might also interest you to know that I have not pledged a fraternity and I don’t plan to,” Henry said.
“It’s not like I’m asking you to be my boyfriend or to plan anything beyond the dance tomorrow. That’s probably the limit of my socializing for the year.”
“Okay, Lisa. What color is your dress?”
“Huh? Green… I guess. You don’t need to get a flower. Nobody will have flowers.”
“I just wanted to make sure my tie doesn’t clash. And I don’t want to look like we dressed all coordinated like a couple.”
“Oh, God, no! Wear, like, a blue or a red tie. Or if that’s too political, black if you want. Don’t match me!”
“I think we have the basics down then. I’ll be at Kappa house at eight o’clock sharp.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Lisa.”
Henry worked a while longer, but found he was distracted. He really hadn’t forgotten the dance was tomorrow. He had an alarm set on his phone. He supposed he could have been a little less distant since she asked him out, but he hadn’t really changed any of his behaviors one way or the other.
He finally shut down, showered, and went to bed. Hmm. He wondered what Lisa would be like as a lover. He shook that thought off. There was absolutely nothing that would lead him to believe he and Lisa would have anything except a decent time at a dance and they would continue as classmates. That was all.
He went to sleep thinking he would need to get a haircut in the morning.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
