Page 26 (1/2)
The place really was busy, she saw And being run like clockwork Several species Molly didn’t recognize ave them a tour
"Fyde, Parsona," their Stanley said to the Stanley behind the desk Then he turned to Molly and explained, "Yourwill you be visiting?"
Molly hadn’t thought about that How long would she need? How different would this be fro to the "mom" in her spaceship?
"A few hours?" she asked out loud
"Put her down for three hours, Stanley"
"Very good, Stanley" The uide turned and handed them the passes, which they draped over their necks Then he turned to Cole and pointed to a large portrait on the wall "Your question,Dr Dakura’s intellect is still awaiting its answer Let’s go down a few levels and see for ourselves, shall we?"
Molly nodded eagerly and followed along after their energetic guide She put one hand on Walter’s elbow and guided hi hi into anyone
An elevator dinged ahead of theed an elderly human couple Molly and Cole both nodded, reflexively, as their group entered the lift Stanley pressed a button and typed some commands into a keyboard affixed to the wall
The back of the elevator flickered for a moment, then displayed a video The first scene showed an elevator descending toward the center of a circular, gray moon Below this stood a side-on view of the huin our tour at the center of Dakura’s an "At the heart of LIFE Of course, ‘heart’ is a poor norance We no primal emotions lie here, at the core of our brains"
Stanley faced theers over appropriate portions of the iht, sienius," he directed this to Cole, "was to understand the corams and previous attempts at AI were doomed due to their complexity For hundreds of years, computer scientists tried to recreate an object around which they knew nothing It took a psychologist who understood that object, and dabbled in coh"
The video flashed to a shot of a scientist standing over as about the brain these other researchers neglected to take into account First, the illusion of a single program is just that: an illusion Second, the brain is imperfect" Stanley’s mechanical eyes peeled away fro over the trio The video changed back to a graphical representation of their descent to the center of the moon with an overlay of the human brain on top
"The huraainst one another All of them are imperfect They make mistakes Dr Dakura was the first researcher to introduce coraree of randos that weren’t truly there They would incorporate lies as truths It was brilliant work for which he never sought recognition, neither through publication nor awards"
The elevator dinged Itswiftly, but there had been no sense of it ever starting or stopping Molly looked to her feet, wondering if there were gravity panels in the floor
"Right this way," Stanley said
They filed out while another group, a Stanley and two Callites stood to the side The Stanleys greeted one another politely Molly s they were a couple She remembered the race from her childhood on Lok and was somewhat surprised the notoriously impoverished people could afford the services The feled forward on two canes, barely able to walk There was no need to guess which of the aliens was considering enrollment
Molly stepped out of the elevator andwith her Their group exited onto a long, wide balcony Two other groups stood by the loall lining the edge and listened intently to their own Stanleys Beyond the railing loomed a massive chamber, carved out of raw moon, that stretched out for kiloantic shelves on which stood colorful druh to hold a human body
"This is where it all happens," Stanley said, waving his arm across the vast expanse "Almost forty three thousand heavens"
"That’s howAs you can see, we’re signing people up every day Not just humans, either, as Dakura’s advances have translated well to other biological systeht add Many of our clients are just bored with their nor into ours"
Molly walked to the balcony and looked at the canisters in the distance She thought about the analogy her mom had made of people in jars "Is my mom in one of those?" she whispered
"Oh,in another portion of the moon These cylinders are packed with spools of fiber-optic cable Each cylinder contains billions of terabytes of data, stored as little pulses of light thatdevice thousands of times a second We love to point out that people who’ve had brushes with death always saw a light approaching We offer that Literally An entire afterlife created by light waves, a land of li--"
"It’ss a hard drive," Walter said Molly turned, shocked to see how rapt the boy had become The computer had even been returned to its holster His silvery hands grasped the railing as he leaned forward, peering across the expansive chamber
"Why, yes, my boy They are like old-fashioned hard drives I’"
"He’s from Palan," Cole explained "Lots of antique equipment there"
"What would heaven be like?" Molly asked, her thoughts far from the technical wizardry "Forlady I was just getting to that" He addressed them all in hushed tones of wonder: "Heaven would be whatever you wanted it to be! Iine that A place where you can be forever happy, no ?" asked Cole "Or repetitive? And how can you knohat makes each person happy? Or even leave it up to theht, and you are extre et along quite famously And he encountered those very problems before he stumbled upon a simple solution"
Cole narrowed his eyes "Which was?"
"Leave the brain in charge! Dr Dakura’s algorithram As soon as the client becomes less happy than it was earlier, the environment shifts If the unhappiness continues to increase, it tries a new tactic It keeps doing this until it maximizes data output from the pleasure center It’s the same way a robot--much simpler than myself, of course--learns its way around a darkened roo a new direction