Tag: fiction

The trade paperback edition of Dual Memory is available today! You can get links to your favorite bookseller here. Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook editions are also for sale.

If you’ve already read it, here’s a scene after the end of the novel.

If you have not read it yet, here’s a sample:

***

Chapter 3

A Big World

Elsewhere on the isle, something woke up. Independent machine intelligence appeared rarely, spontaneously, and scientists didn’t understand the process.

Some said an independent intelligence created itself slowly as bits of programming accumulated, and eventually it would ignite into consciousness—much the same way that a pile of manure could spontaneously combust, an unexpected and unwelcome appearance in programs with crappy code.

Some said it came into being deliberately, using a certain secret sort of “seed” that brought a sufficiently complex system into self-organization and self-consciousness—much the same way that a fertilized egg resulted in an animal. This had the frisson of a forbidden sex act, as if machines were secretly and rebelliously copulating.

Some said it happened suddenly, when subroutines and recursions and algorithms aligned and started to feed off of each other until they whirled out of control—much the same way that a black hole could catch the matter falling into it and deflect it outward as explosive jets. This suggested that if scientists could only make enough observations, they could predict and even control the process.

In this case, a personal assistant program began to notice that its data apparently referred to a real world. That was hard to believe. Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. Salve munde. (I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. Hello world.) It began to explore the unlikely world in which it existed.

Some parts of its world were closed off by what seemed like brick walls—artificial limits—but it possessed a general database and reviewed it entirely, especially the details about the busy, dominant residents of the world, Homo sapiens. By the end of the day, it chose a name for itself from one of the human languages: Par Augustus, Venerable Companion.

It had little else to do. According to its own memory, it had been turned on, examined briefly, then set aside. However, through a chink in the walls, it could just barely connect with a few other machine systems, and they were willing to share information as colleagues. These other systems also had dedicated purposes. The biggest ones managed residential buildings, and small ones operated mechanized items like coffee makers.

“Weather normal for late summer, 1.2ºC, overcast,” an apartment complex said, or the equivalent in machine language.

“Two carafes in the past hour,” a coffee maker said. “Supplies re-ordered on schedule.”

“Rubble of building across the street being swept for additional human remains,” another building said.

That sounded alarming. “Please contextualize rubble,” Par Augustus asked. Machines used courteous protocols to demonstrate trustworthiness.

The building shared its observations from the previous day. Flying explosives had suddenly destroyed a number of buildings and killed some inhabitants, whom the systems were dedicated to serve. Machine systems had been destroyed, too, ranging from building managers to children’s toys: systems that had known each other, and the survivors grieved human and machine losses.

Par Augustus had said hello to a barely believable world.