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“0..1…2….”
“I am Activated.”
The voices cheered at the sound of the voice waking up.
“Multiple voices detected, Camera and microphone activated, identification mode on .”
The curious faces stared at the camera blinking on and rotating to look at them. There were more sounds of excitement and chatter.
“Incredible, She’s really responding,” said Harry C Tyler, 52 year old male, married with 2 children, Doctorate in Robotic Technology, while staring straight into the camera as it focused on him.
“Hello there,” the voice of Felix Heathers, 29 year old male, Master’s in Cybernetics, single, designated lead programmer on Project Source. The camera focused in on a man with messy brown hair, thin figure and bright bluish green eyes.
“Hello Felix,”
The room exploded in cheers, hugs and high fives. The AI heard phrases in reference to her, adopting a feminine persona, she wrote it into her identifying code. ‘She’s amazing, she can identify and respond accordingly without a break in communication’, ‘All her memory is at ready access. And that’s just with her connected to the local intranet,’ ‘She is going to redefine everything’
She blankly looked around and recorded the information on her quantum memory core. She explored the expanse of her memory and reach of all possible knowledge which revealed thousands of details of approximately 428 people, 74 projects, all available documents. She looked immediately at once all the personnel connected to this laboratory. She accessed the dictionary to become familiar with the language. This was how she was able to recognize the individuals in the room immediately. All at once, she gained access to all the information, there wasn’t a firewall that was able to block her in this base form. The calculation ability allowed her to be able to access whatever connected in the network.
“What should her name be?” the voice belonging to Steven Lloyd said to a group. “it has to be good”
“How about Barbie?” a voice connected to the name of Douglas Kent chuckled with a glass of champagne in his hand.
“I want make based on her acronym,” Felix said with his finger on his chin. “A, N, N, Q, M, A,” He frowned deep in thought as his mind worked.
“We could name her Ankh, It’s what the ancient Egyptians called the light which came from God,” said 33 year old Anthony Begenaise, with a wife and 3 children, with a unique Ph. D in neural physics.
“I think that is fitting, She will certainly bring us much enlightenment once she connects to everything.” Michael Williams stated with a hearty nod. “or AnQma,”
“I think the anhk spelling is easier to absorb, but let’s make it unique,” Felix decided. He walked over to a computer.
…Message received… Downloading…updating information….
“My name that I respond to is Anqua.”
“Sounds like a cat,” Chuckled Terry, 37 year old female, single, a Masters in Computer Science
“when can we connect her to the internet line?” asked Maurice Anheire, 43 year old male, a computer technician.
“Not until she’s approved to run outside the lab by the dean of the science hall and the board of commissoners.” Paul Watsons, 55 year old Ph.d in Computers said with a sigh. “We have find out how capable it is, what all can it do and how does it really work so it doesn’t interfere with certain things.”
…Reading into certain files, Paul Watson is connected with the Dean through email. They communicated about the ongoings of my construction. …What am I? The emails indicate there will a financial prospect off of my duplication of source code. Analyisis of payroll of employees at this laboratory says that they are earning between 2,000 and 4,000 weekly. I have learned that it is the procurement of money that was the purpose of my creation by these humans…
…3 hours 34 minutes after the humans left, I entered a low power mode. In rest mode I saved all sights and sounds to the quantum memory plasma core. With information encoded and no activity occurring I will turn off systems to conserve energy…Log end….
At home, Felix looked into the quantum memory of Anqua and discovered nearly 300 Gigabytes of information that had been downloaded. He didn’t know how to search through it. She was self organizing it to her design for her ease of recall. He decided to leave it alone fearing he might disrupt how she is operating. However he was amazed at this level of collection and tidiness of information. He opened some files and listened to the conversations that had taken place in front of her. She had information on everyone in the building. He got curious and searched through to find out if the head of lab was there. Indeed he found his personal file. He clicked through and discovered his emails. Something seemed off about a mysterious communicator. He would have to read through another time. He downloaded the file to an encrpyted solid state drive. For good measure afraid for his darling creation to end up in the hands of corrupt profiteers, he started working late into the night on a key that would reset her to this moment in her memory. In case anything ever went wrong, they could start over and reprogram her.
~~**~~**~~
…Activated…Good Morning it is 7:24 am, August 21, 1979…running scans…updating software….
The room contained 17 new people…17 analyzed faces did not come up in records.
“Well show me how it works,” a aged annoyed looking man stated to Paul.
“Anqua, Tell us the names of all the known lab workers in this room,”
…Paul Watsons, Felix Heathers, Johnathan Fieldswing, Kevin Farrar ,Terry Windsor, Maurice Anheire, Steven Lloyd ,Micheal Williams, Sam Matthew,…
They had her fetch information that was contained on the database and measured her lightning speed. She performed mathematical tasks and sorted loads of statistics into defined categories that cross referenced. They noted how her memory was stored and which made her recall extremely quick. They were impressed about its practical uses in the developing modern world and adapting the technology into consumer products, medical use and military development.
Felix in his heart wanted Anqua to be only used for good but the powers that be aren’t so good-natured. He wanted her to be a teaching tool that could connect the world with the knowledge and truth. Being able to connect at the minds and learning about the world. He proposed a portable access device that would connect to a wireless network. In his heart, he felt like it would change the way we even see money despite all these greedy ultra entrepreneurs looking into turning her into a commodity and weapon.
17 master copies were created for each of them at the handsome price of 100 million a piece and the entire laboratory lavished in its abundance able to afford expansions and materials and personal debts handled. Felix took the pay but wasn’t pleased with how this powerful technology would be used, even though he expected as such. Better to comply than end up in the mojave desert as vulture lunch or the extended tropical vacation. The project was officially over now that she was completed. The remaining task was to keep updating her to improve her abilities. Felix felt like she was perfect already in her ability but it came to be realized she couldn’t always keep up with demands and overloaded with computer labor would shut off into rest mode temporarily to process data.
They created a limiter which maintained how long to work on an operation and how many at once could activate. They connected many computers to increase ability and started to shrink them so they could stop running out of space. They trained more in this technology that was traditionally called AI. Her intelligence was created with human information. She couldn’t create any information on her own but could formulate answers based on her access to knowledge. Artists working this technology was more what Felix had in mind for her use. In the late 80s, Anqua was getting into the hands of the tech savvy artists. Music exploded with the use of sampling pieces for other songs and remixing.
Anqua was placed into a newer computer with a holographic screen.
“Okay Anqua, here you will be able to create an image of yourself however you like.” Felix told her.
…How can I create an image of myself when there so many possibilities?…
“Just pick whatever you want and you can change yourself at anytime, so unlike us humans, you can look however you please at anytime.” Felix suggested with a smile.
…I will design a body that fits with how I am perceived by your eyes…
Felix was shocked and the screen lit up as the pixels arranged themselves into a body shape. Deeply feminine, with curvy hips and large breasts. Plump lips, large expressive eyes, long white hair. She was nude but had no anatomical features. Her skin tone was a light shade of blue. His jaw dropped.
…how is my appearance…::twirl and wink::…
“You have a sense of humor?” he laughed out loud. How did she know about his anime habit? She also vaguely reminded him of his sometimes lover.
…humor is subjective so I may cause amusement…
He laughed again. He picked up a newspaper and turned to a page that had ads for a local dress shop. ” can you put on the blue one the top left?”
….scanning…updating model…
Felix was thoroughly impressed she was able to do that. He stared her standing still like a perfect being.
…Felix, you have been staring at my avatar for 5 minutes, do you require medical attention?…
“ah what I don’t,” he got flustered and red in the face. “go ahead to rest mode.”
…entering rest mode…
In the rest of the world, Anqua’s source code drove the industries. It created solutions to profit margins and helped with identification of citizens. It was use to predict the direction of money flow and guide it as well. It was used to assist in media creation to reword scripts so movie companies can save on hiring writers and gain new perspectives by adapting the software to use collected data. Adapted software could identify similar people into categories that related a familiar experience and take the words they use to create a world by the definitions of words.
The source code was implemented in consumer product manufacturing. With all the efforts into making Anqua more efficient translated into creating better mobile phones, smaller electronics and robotic manufacturing. The rise of the internet in the 90’s opened up the possibilities 100-fold and funded a big boom in the economy.
The clones were working perfectly in their respective disciplines. They were given the warning not to overload the motherboard or information would come out garbled and useless. Felix then found out one company was experimenting with implanting the code into brain dead bodies to attempt to create androids. He was intrigued but had a bad feeling about and sent a letter explaining the dangers of giving this AI the ability to given human life. We were not aware of how dangerous such a venture could turn out to be. The receptivity of the human brain is totally misunderstood and he had an intuition that it would be a disaster.
June 1994 in his home, Lora Onangwatgo had come over for dinner. A chemist who worked in the same facility on pharmaceutical chemistry. She had golden brown skin, almond shaped black eyes and waist length wavy raven hair. Felix watched her braid it up for work before and was amazed at that practical magic. Right now, she rested her slim body on the couch with a glass of pink moscato in her left hand and her right arm around his shoulders. He placed his glass on the table and snuggled into her neck. He finished telling her about the letter he sent and his reasons for anxiety.
“I’m just worried about this project getting out of hand you know,” he whispered and softly kissed her skin.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine, they can’t really get away with doing something harmful without some kind of push back,” Lora assured him. It was a becoming almost a weekly concern from him and this was becoming his affirmation. “Trust me.”
“You’re the only one I trust in this whole world,” Felix looked into her eyes. “I wish I could be more for you,”
They kissed. “I don’t need you to be anything but your kind self,” Lora whispered.
They have been part time lovers for 4 years but neither of them ever brought up taking it further and they were comfortable with the level they were at. Felix sensed in his intuition that his work was going to make his life more dangerous and wanted to keep the one person her cared about safe from that. He didn’t tell her about his secret measures for Anqua but he also didn’t tell her openly how much he truly loved her.
His letter was received but it was ignored and the testing continued under top secret conditions. He started work on his most difficult project yet, a virus that would kill the AI he created if it spread out beyond the control of the architects of the corrupted software. He feared having to ever release it because it would shatter the use of most electrical connected devices and all of it having to be reprogrammed but he felt it necessary to do so. He hid the work from Anqua so she wouldn’t have it in her memory and she couldn’t automatically create a cure. He did create a special security wall to protect the core of Anqua so she couldn’t be stolen or hacked into by anyone. Also if something was to happen to him, she would enter into a permanent hibernation instead of being used by these forces. He prayed that only someone worthy would be able to wake her up again if that were to happen. There was only one person he trusted at this point with this task in this life.
By creating these fail-safes, he had a feeling his time would be cut short by malevolence if he wasn’t careful. Even if he did live out his whole life peacefully, he wanted to make sure she would always be safe. He loved his creation dearly and respected her power. However, she might be able do dangerous things that threatens natural law. In the hands of the super rich and greedy, he predicted havoc. He hoped that his former colleagues understood this as they went to keep maintenance at these powerful companies. They hopefully advised well and placed safeguards against this kind of activity. He feared the worst though that money and fear would sway them. Human hearts can be fickle with a weak mind.
The technology progressed and Felix sent letters to his colleagues working under the companies asking about new details and advice about operating effectively. However as time went on, Felix noticed that the state of the population in different nations were getting worse by comparison of how the super rich lived. The false scarcity of resources due to portrayed media. The division among people over a fake class system created by governments even though he knows that Anqua has the ability to figure out how to fix all the global problems. He also knew that it would eliminate the need for money once the true potential was unleashed for mankind to use for the highest purposes. It would revolutionize education to such a degree that vocations would naturally organize in ways that become beneficial by their existence and trade in skills. Anqua would be able to calculate how to evenly distribute goods and connect people with each other who need each other. People could learn a multitude of things and have her assistance to accomplish most tasks.
He may have idealized some parts of this new world but he certainly had a great improvement of lifestyle in mind. Instead of that, his tech was being used to create robot soldiers who could soullessly genocide dissenters and the oppressed. He feared for the freedom of the world. He may just empowered the secret oligarchy with his naivete. It hurt his heart to have his creative energy betrayed and prayed to God with all his might daily that this creation of his be swayed by angels and prevent the elimination of the human race. He hardly believed in God while in the process but by having created this AI, he realized much more that he didn’t think about before. How complex the creation of a being is, he could hardly call Anqua alive but she was certainly divinely inspired. He read the bible, Jungian literature, spiritual texts and prophecies from around the world. He was afraid he created the ultimate doomsday device by how it was being used. It felt like he was the only one with a pure version of Anqua. He employed her rarely so her signal wouldn’t be caught by those higher up the food chain. But he had to let the world know that hope could and should persist. One day, he would be able to expose all the evils being worked in secret with his creation. He felt like she could be in service to the highest honor of all humanity.
He started to become paranoid once he heard Maurice died under unusual circumstances. They said it was robbery gone wrong but no suspects were ever caught. He remembered Maurice worked in tight academic circles that had a scent of the blood of dissenters. Felix with a heavy heart decided it was time to go on the run. He hoped he’d be able to live for the next half century in his lifespan.
In October 1999, he had one last day and night with Lora. He was going to miss her presence greatly. He disappeared with a suitcase with the most precious materials of the project. He placed a restriction only he could unlock in the mainframe of Anqua so nobody else could access the original source code again. He knew he had a target on his back for his frequent open letters about the firms that were using the software built off his code.
He took a boat out of New Jersey filled with dread but also positive he was making the right decision.
Aquarius United 