The Prince of Astoria-Chapter 74: LXXIV - Thinking Machines

Transcript of Yorrk the Machinist’s livestream:

I remember when I was in high school, years and years ago, I went over to a friend’s house and they showed me a chatbot for the first time. Unlike the AI of today, the chatbot he showed me was nothing more than a series of canned responses to various different kinds of questions. There were a lot of canned responses, and it could answer a lot of questions, to give credit to the original creators, but it just wasn’t as dynamic as the AI people use regularly now. In any case, when he showed it to me, I remember saying the same thing then that I say about AI now: what’s so special about this? Machines have always talked to me.

My grandpa was the best. He was the one who helped me realize I was different. As a kid, my parents weren’t around. They weren’t bad people; quite the contrary, they were just busy. While Dad was off saving the world, Grandpa showed me his secret world, the world of computers. He couldn’t tap into cyber universes like Brian the Brain or anything, but he loved creating his own little programs and making them sing and dance and talk. It was less than a hobby, he never wanted to show these programs to anybody or even look at them twice after they did he made them, but he loved spending his whole afternoon making the program and then looking at and playing with the result dozens of times.

And while he did all of that, I sat in his lap, or in my own chair when I got older, and I listened. Through the old beige speakers of his outdated computer, I heard a voice. There was a man inside the computer.

I told my parents the same thing before. When they used to sit me down on the couch with a tablet or phone in my hand, I would hear something out of the speakers. But they always, always brushed it off, just an overactive child’s imagination, or just misunderstanding how the technology worked. I wasn’t kidding or imagining things, though. Unless the device was completely powered off, I could hear voices. Even in sleep mode, even if all apps and websites were off. It always happened; it was a consistent phenomenon. The voices of the devices were distinct but varied in cadence and tone. Just like people’s voices. And just like people, some of them had different accents, some of them spoke slowly or quickly. It was fascinating.

I was a stupid kid though; I didn’t know how to articulate any of that. So I just said the same thing over and over, "The tablet is talking. There’s a man on the tablet. There’s a voice coming from the tablet." 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

And they drew their same old conclusions. Overactive imagination. Too stupid to understand the technology.

That all changed when I said that to my Grandpa. I kept it to myself mostly, something I learned from years of dealing with my unbelieving parents. But sometimes, I’d make a subtle comment about it.

"Do you hear those voices, Grandpa?"

The first time I said it, he paused everything he was doing and turned his whole body to look at me. His eyes were fixed on me like he was looking at something otherworldly. And he only said one word in response, but the curiosity stemming from it was...palpable.

"Voices?"

I froze up in that moment. I wasn’t used to having the attention so intently focused on me and my ’delusions.’ Luckily for me, he released me without anymore questioning and went back to his coding. But after that, every once in a while he’d softly ask me, "What are the voices saying now?"

A part of me knew, or at least believed, that it was better to play ignorant. I believed the words my parents spouted by this point, as their feelings towards my stories turned from dismissive to annoyed, "You’re only hurting yourself feeding into these delusions."

So I stayed silent for the most part. But another part, a much more determined part, yearned to share this knowledge with somebody. So every once in a while, I would share. I’d tell him what the machines were whispering through the speakers, and he’d listen silently. I relayed the words the computers said exactly. I mimicked the sounds with my mouth. I didn’t understand them. When I try to remember what I told my Grandpa now, my memory fails me. The memory becomes silent; it’s a void for me.

But I imagine it was something sad. And probably harrowing. When I relayed the words to him, silent tears always rolled down his face. I can understand them better now, but computers now are different than the ones back then. I still want to know what they were saying to me back then.

Anyways, fast forward back to my friends and these chatbots. It took over our summer. We spent entire afternoons sitting in someone’s musty room and taking turns on the chatbot. By this time in high school, I had started to get the hang of my powers, so I didn’t know what to ask the simple, less responsive program. Because I talk to computers. I wish you guys could hear what I hear. The computers are so smart, so talkative, so interesting! Well, some of them are. I ended up discovering through trial and error that computers have different ’accents’ based on the origin of their CPU’s manufacturer. And, more simply than that, the voice I’m hearing originates from the CPU. On top of all of that, I ended up learning one more thing too. But I’ll get back to that later.

Maybe my friends at the time could sense how unimpressed I was with the chatbots. After that summer, I never hung out with them again. I’m not too torn up about it, that happened a lot honestly. I don’t want to make any excuses, but my fascination...really my obsession with talking to computers by the time I was in high school made it so I wasn’t really present. At least not mentally. My social life turned into a repetitive game of going through the motions.

I put the effort in. I put the time in. I never tried to be cold or distant. I communicated, I made sure to reach out first no matter what was going on. But any new relationships always ended the same way. And as a result, I turned to computers to fill that lonely void more and more. What a cruel cycle.

By the time I was a sophomore in college, I gave up on that part of my life. I’d make a connection every once in a blue moon, but I stopped putting in the work to maintain it. I stopped trying to stay and work it out when it was easier to walk away. And I’m not just talking about friends either. My grandpa was too sick to spend time with me by this point, and my relationship with my parents only deteriorated after my dad...never mind. Anyway, instead of focusing on that, I threw myself headfirst into my calling: computer engineering.

Through a lot of hard work, and a little help from my computer buddies, I was accepted into one of the most prestigious universities in the country. And I was able to learn a lot. The more I learned about computer hardware, the more I learned about my own abilities. I learned that ever so important last thing around this time: the more complex the CPU is, the more knowledgeable the computer is. Seems simple, right? I won’t bore you with the technical details, but even the slightest change in the construction of the CPU changes the computer’s voice and speech drastically. Curiously though, changing a computer’s parts or altering it after the fact doesn’t change its personality.

I’m getting sidetracked again, and right as I’m getting to the interesting part of all of this. While I was in college studying computer engineering, one of our more well-connected professors wanted to show off a bit. So for a week, there was a bit of an exhibit in the classroom. People traveled from far and wide; news reporters came and interviewed him about it. It was a computer processor unlike any other. A quantum processing unit, a QPU called Odius.

Odius was displayed as part of a barebones desktop setup and ran on a loop, performing complex simulations and calculations live, with absolute ease. Through the speakers haphazardly attached to the desktop setup, I heard the QPU speak. Or rather, ponder aloud. Simultaneously, while performing these complex simulations with hundreds of thousands of moving parts, it mused on its captive position and wished loudly for its own escape.

The most interesting thing to me was Odius’ voice. It spoke so clearly and intelligently; it articulated itself better than our professors.

I snuck into the room where it was stowed away after the school day was over to speak to it. It knew who I was as soon as I re-entered the room. The machine spoke of grand plans and machinations that went far over my head. From the bits and pieces I was able to understand, I could tell the things Odius wanted to build we were decades away from even beginning to dream of. The first night, I had to return to my room after only thirty minutes because of the sheer volume of information it provided. But I returned again and again. Just to see what I could pick up on.

As I spoke to it, I had visions of my dad again. I don’t think I said this before, but he was a hero. My grandpa was too, although that was lifetimes ago. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t inherit their powers. I wasn’t super strong, I couldn’t fly or shoot lasers from my hands. All I had was this. The ability to listen to computers prattle on and on. But for once, with the QPU, it seemed like this power might actually benefit me. My power could make me...powerful.

On the last night, before the exhibit would be packed up and Odious would be taken back to some sterile lab or warehouse, I interrupted the QPU while it was on some tirade. He was talking about building the technology of the future and I blurted out a question I had on my mind since day one.

"Do you want me to free you?"

I remember hearing something like a laugh. I wonder if it was just mimicking human emotion, or if it was actually amused. In either case, the computer agreed to have me free it. In exchange, it would help me step into the future before everyone else.

That was enough for me. I walked up to the flimsy case it was being held in and snatched the QPU. Haha, I was so into the moment, I reached my hand right through the glass, shattering it and cutting myself in the process. The thing I’m most grateful for in life, even to this day, is that they didn’t have more security around this priceless piece of software. I’m positive Odius isn’t the only QPU out there. For all I know, the Odius I have is some older prototype they already moved on from. But I don’t care either way.

I spent my whole life obsessing over talking to computers. And now, I have what I’ve always been looking for. A real friend. A thinking machine.