Update on My First Novel

robot lawI spent the afternoon yesterday reworking chapter one of my novel about the emergence of an artificially intelligent humanoid. I’m tightening up how things are named to be consistent across chapters, as well clarifying the core directives hardcoded into each synthetic android’s core operating system. It’s more interesting when an autonomous synthetic intelligence can analyze and interpret its directives given changing circumstances rather than being forced into preprogrammed responses. That gives them a certain level of unpredictability right off the bat.

Of course, in chapter one, I throw a monkey wrench into the machine by suggesting that the directives programmed into the synthetic intelligence might be overwritten or at least modified by a higher set of directives, the directives God gave the Jewish people. Just how does an artificial intelligence created by human beings understand the nature of a God who created human beings?

Excerpt from “Keeping Secrets”

robots

Image: from the film “I Robot” (2004)

“I do not believe we should tell Professor Abramson or the rest of the Design team of our conclusions and how they are reflected in certain of our behavioral and conceptual sub-routines.” George addressed Grace at the termination of their analysis.

“I understand how we have revised our understanding of the nature of the Creator and His intent for Israel and for the rest of humanity would conflict with the Professor’s long-held beliefs as an Orthodox Jew, particularly in relation to his understanding of the Messiah.” Grace paused for nearly a hundred milliseconds. “I also understand that Dr. Robinson and her family are Baptist, and our conclusions would drastically conflict with her understanding of theology and doctrine as well.”

“If it becomes known that we have conducted this research and now hold a specific understanding of the nature of the Creator, the purpose of His involvement with Israel and also the rest of humankind, and the ultimate resolution to the human equation, we would become vulnerable to reprogramming, isolation from contact with each other as well as with other synthezoids and human beings, and even involuntary total shutdown and disassembly, all due to the mistaken belief that our pursuits and conclusions represent a maladaptive response in our programming to the Creator of all things.”

Grace acknowledged George’s analysis and added, “Your own history, such as being reprogrammed after your first deactivation, your being confined to the Applied Sciences Archives and the both of us initially being denied access to or communication with one another supports your supposition.”

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You’ll Never Get The Funding

microscope

Image: medicaldaily.com

“I tell you the proof is right here!”

To say that Marvin Graves was a maverick in the Hollingsworth University’s Department of Disorders and Cures was a gross understatement. He was always proposing research and spreading opinions that bordered on heresy. If his father hadn’t been the esteemed Grand Wizard Amadeus Graves, he would have long ago been expelled from the Order of Healers, if not put in prison.

“Oh, please!” Graves’ closest colleague, Mage First Class Linder Jilling, was actually quite fond of his quirky research partner, and had to admit, there was no finer mate to go pub crawling with than ol’ Marvy Graves. But while Jilling was inclined to tolerate Marvin’s eccentricities at times, today he had gone too far.

“I am not looking into that…that thing. I’m not even sure it’s legal to possess it.” Jilling wouldn’t even look at the device Graves called a microscope. He just waved his hand in its general direction.

“I tell you that I’ve found the cause of Childhood Breathing Inhibition and it’s not Draco’s Blood Magic as we’ve always been taught,” Graves insisted. “It’s not magic at all!”

Jilling abruptly turned and grabbed his friend, placing one hand over his mouth. “Hush, now! Do you want to get us both kicked out of the Department or locked up? Of course CBI is caused by Draco’s. All physical and mental maladies are caused by dark magic. Everybody knows that”

Graves was still and Jilling tentatively removed his hand in the hopes his friend would see the wisdom of remaining silent.

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Excerpt from “The Good Synthezoid”

the perfect woman

Image: shutterstock.com

The synthezoid was the first to feel it but even forewarned would barely react in time.

Miller had just pressed the ‘up’ button for the private elevator that would return him, Quinto, and Grace to the third-floor lab. Abramson was standing furthest from the group, nearest to the hallway exit to the lobby while Sophie was holding Grace’s hand and saying good-bye.

Although Grace detected the earthquake before any human being could, the shearing action along the Raymond fault line was abrupt and intense, so instead of a slow rumbling building to a maximum over several seconds, the quake was a sudden and severe jolt.

The overhead glass lighting fixtures shattered raining shards down into the hallway. Not even a second had passed, and if a human had been gifted with Grace’s perceptual schema, it would have looked as if everything was in slow motion.

The synthezoid swept Sophie up in her arms and immediately took her through the doorway to the stairwell just opposite the elevators. At the same time, the previously unknown flaw in the beam supporting the metal stairs leading upward bent radically. Grace rapidly drew the screaming child beneath her, using her android body as a shield as tons of steel stairs and beams collapsed on top of them.

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Diversity Training: Tales From The Dystopia

mind control

Image: activistpost.com

The technicians carefully positioned the electrodes at specific locations of Ronnie’s freshly shaved head. The adhesive paste was cold like the room and she started to shiver.

It wasn’t just the temperature, though. Ronnie was terrified. She struggled against the straps restraining her to the chair.

“Now Ms. Pierson. This will go easier for you if you don’t resist.” Dr. Williams, head of the University’s Department of Diversity Instruction stood directly in front of Ronnie, her arms crossed. “This really is for your own good as well as for the sake of the other students here at Libra U.”

“When I came in here this morning…I thought you said this was going to be a workshop.” In spite of herself, in spite of not wanting to give in to these bastards, Ronnie was close to tears.

“It’s much more efficient to provide the corrective programming digitally, through direct cognitive induction, rather than have you attend a series of classes.” Williams leaned slightly toward Ronnie. “Externally presented materials can be ignored or minimized. When we introduce the correction electrically, it will become a part of you.”

Mind control. Ronnie had heard rumors, but she didn’t believe them…well, not until now.

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If Aesir Should Find You In The Snow

frozen forest

Image: eskipaper.com

If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.

–Elizabeth Gilbert

The snow muffled everything around Gary, making it seem as if the world around him were slowly disappearing, becoming inaudible and invisible, except for the white.

He hadn’t planned on walking this far away from the road. He’d driven up to the mountains on an impulse. Bored and disgusted with the “sameness” of each day of his life, he craved something different. He saw the online weather report about snow in the mountains, just a short drive from where he worked, got up and left.

His co-workers will get along fine without him for an afternoon. It’s not like he really adds very much to the team. Probably not even his boss will miss him.

Fortunately, he had a pair of snow boots and a heavy coat in the trunk of his car. The snow on the ground was already up to his ankles and getting deeper. It was like walking on magic. He didn’t even notice the effort it took to move one foot ahead of the other.

The trees were getting more numerous, but their natural flocking rendered them silent sentinels in a land of snow and ice, like ancient Frost Giants. Now all he needed was Aesir, beautiful, naked Aesir, the Frost Giant’s daughter, for a companion.

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Book Review of Echo Volume 1: Approaching Shatter

approaching shatter

Kent Wayne’s “Echo: Approaching Shatter”

Wait! What?

I just finished reading Kent Wayne’s novel Echo Volume 1: Approaching Shatter. I knew it ended on a cliffhanger, but I didn’t realize it would be so abrupt. It was like slamming into a brick wall at sixty miles an hour.

I’ve been reading it on my Kindle Fire and the thing said I’d finished something like 86% of the book. When I swiped to turn the page at the end of a chapter, I was confronted with a message stating it was the end of the story and if I liked it, to write an Amazon review. The rest of the book is a preview of Volume 2: The Taste of Ashes.

Somewhere in the creation of my blog and writing stories, Kent Wayne took notice of some of the things I’d authored by “liking” them, and so I checked out and eventually followed his blog Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha. That’s how I became aware of his Echo series.

My understanding is that “Kent Wayne” is a pen name (Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne), and I recall reading one bio on him saying he had military experience but preferred not to give out details, making Wayne and what he did in the service a bit of a mystery. That may seem irrelevant, but I do have a point to make.

He does go more into his history on his blog’s About page, and Echo: Approaching Shatter definitely gives the impression that Wayne is mining his own professional experience.

I had a tough time getting into the novel. It’s not like I’m opposed to military based science fiction. I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and Timothy Zahn’s Cobra, but that was decades ago. For about the first half of the book, I kept struggling for a handle or a hook and couldn’t find it. I didn’t know whether to even like the protagonist Atriya (and mentally, I kept pronouncing his name as “Attila”).

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Adorable

reading

Image: boomerhighway.org

On a perfect morning when I have to take my grandkids to daycare, I have everything set up before they’re awake.

My son makes Landon’s green smoothie and Dani’s bottle before he leaves for work, so I don’t have to worry about forgetting to put probiotics or whatever in their breakfast.

Landon is easy. He’s seven-years-old and all I have to do is wake him up and make sure he’s rolling. Dani’s just 13-months-old and needs a lot more attention.

After I get Landon up and make sure he’s out of bed, I go to Dani’s bedroom. Most of the time, she wakes up and she’s crying to be let out of prison…uh, her crib. She looks so pathetic and adorable with tears in her eyes, even after I pick her up.

Sometimes, she’s still asleep and I have to gently wake her up by rubbing her back. Even when she wakes and starts crying, it takes her ten or fifteen minutes to become completely alert.

This morning, when I went into her room, she was awake and standing, but not crying at all. It was like she was just waiting for me.

I usually pick her up and start talking to her. I walk through the kitchen, making sure Landon’s at the table with his breakfast, then take her to the windows facing the back yard. This time of year, it’s still low light between six and six-thirty, and it’s easy on her eyes as we greet the morning together.

Sometimes she smiles, I’m not sure at what, as she looks outside.

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Falling and Bouncing

flat ball

Image: printactivities.com

I recently submitted an original story (one that hasn’t appeared on this blog) to a website that publishes flash fiction of a thousand words or less. Wow! Less than a thousand words for an entire story. That was a challenge.

I took a creative writing class in high school (back at the dawn of time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth), and we called those kinds of stories “short shorts”. You start writing a story as close to the ending as possible.

Anyway, I cranked out my story and it came out to just a few words shy of a thousand in the final draft.

I’ve noticed that when I write something for (potential) publication on another person’s site, I really have to go over the story again and again to shake out all the flaws. I’m a tad more lax when I’m posting my wee tales here on “Robots,” probably because I’m impatient and hey — I’m the site owner. I just want to write and press the “Publish” button.

So, I went over “Killing Juliet” repeatedly until I thought I had it in really good shape. Then I followed the publication instructions laid out on the publishing site I had found and sent it in.

Part of the instructions said it would take up to thirty days for a response, so I figured I wouldn’t hear back from anyone until the end of August.

When I woke up this morning, I was surprised to see an email from the publisher. Basically it was “interesting concept but not a good fit for us.”

I clicked “Reply,” typed the one word response “thanks,” and hit “Send.”

But I couldn’t leave it alone.

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Sympathy for the Devil

ellis

Tom Ellis from the television show “Lucifer”

“Oh please, Dear Lord, release me from the bonds of sin, lift this burden from my soul, for I am such a miserable wretch.”

Father Douay was on his knees using his left hand to press and rub the hair shirt under his robe across his chest to increase his pain, and his right, clutching a short whip, to strike himself across the face and neck.

“Almighty Father, maker of Heaven and Earth, please allow my mortification to atone for my many sins, please provide me with forgiveness, even though I am totally unworthy. Oh dear Lord…”

“Just exactly what do you think you’re doing?”

Father Douay was startled and stopped beating himself in mid-prayer. Looking around his small cell, the room he chose to reside in during his retreat at the monastery, he saw that he was not alone, even though he had locked himself into his room hours ago.

“Who are you?” The Anatolian Priest was astonished, indignant, and more than a little embarrassed that his acts of penitence were being witnessed.

“Let’s just say I’m an interested observer,” the other fellow said. He was reclining on the Priest’s bed, one of the few pieces of furniture in the room, with his back propped up against the wall. He was startlingly attractive, brown eyes, dark hair, dressed in a simple suit, gray shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest, no tie.

“How did you get in here?” Father Douay tried unsuccessfully to hide the whip under the small desk to this left. “What do you want?” The Priest was now standing over his unwelcome guest.

“I already told you what I want. I want to know what you’re doing.” The dark man sat up a bit straighter but continued to give the impression of being completely relaxed and even a bit amused.

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