Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

I can barely focus on Mrs. Jones’ lesson enough to enter it into my electronic brain. I’m sure that export regulations on dual-use technology are important, but I think Father has a special waiver from the U.N. and the Department of Defense on most of that stuff. How could I lose so many of my memories? Every few minutes I’m tempted to tap my dopamine receptors to generate some chemical happiness, but I keep fighting the urge. I spent too much of yesterday doing that and I don’t want to become an addict on top of everything else.

“Are you all right, Noah? You seem out of sorts this morning.” I turn my face toward Mrs. Jones and see the concern in her eyes.

“Yeah, sorry. It’s nothing,” I lie. “I didn’t sleep well last night. Please, go on. You were talking about the difference between ITAR and EAR export regulations.”

One thing that I really miss about conventional schooling is being able to blend in with the class and get ignored when you want to. I can’t argue with the effectiveness of this one-on-one teaching, since I’ve jumped well into college-level material in every subject we’ve worked on. But just sitting in the back and tuning out isn’t an option. I cram my feelings down and give her enough of my attention that she lets my poor performance slide as the nearly automated part of my brain transcribes her lecture.

How much is there that I don’t even realize I can’t remember? For some of it, I have dangling edges of memories that I can pull on so that at least I have some idea of what I don’t know anymore. But I could have had a year where I ran off and joined the circus for all I know. I mean, I think I’d remember that, but I can’t be sure. I can’t remember school teachers past last year, or any classmates ever. I have vague ideas that I had some friends, but I can’t come up with anything about who they were. No names or faces for neighbors either, though I’m sure that I had some. Friendly ones, I think. I remember someone brought over a pie one time. Maybe a nice old lady?

My recent memories all seem fine though. I remember the trip to Africa clearly, and most things since I got here on campus. The stuff since the implant is easy. I just refer back to the console log, and it all rushes back when I read it. My theory right now is that any memories that I didn’t actively access while I was pushing myself training on my new implant senses got chewed up, or at least the recall mechanism connecting to them got broken. Accelerated neural plasticity in action, my brain reallocated what I wasn’t using to enable what I needed. Since I was using my database and index to replace a lot of my recall, those brain cells were fair game. I could maybe get some of the memories back if I had something to prompt them, but I didn’t have much beyond the clothes on my back when I arrived here.

The paper journal helps a lot with my early days here. Maybe I can get Evan to supplement what I didn’t write down at the time, add it all into my implant’s storage. I wonder if I kept one before I came to campus. No. Probably not. The one I have was a gift from Grammy, something she gave me to help me process the grief from Mom’s death if I can believe my own first few entries. If I had kept one before that, I’m sure I would have brought it along.

The worst of it is that this is all my fault. It’s my fault for not remembering Mom enough while I played with my brain implant. If I’d written about her more, thought of her more, I could have kept more memories of her.

I’m the worst son ever.

Mrs. Jones half of class finally ends. Mr. Johnson knocks as he enters. He and Mrs. Jones exchange greetings and goodbyes as she makes her way out. I kick on my solver and apply it to working some statistics problems with Mr. Johnson’s guidance. We calculate the probabilities of breakdowns in various kinds of electricity distribution systems. I think the point is to show that distributed systems with storage buffers are way more resilient than centralized power plants. Kind of obvious, but the exercise is interesting enough that it distracts me from my self-pity. By the end of class I’m feeling slightly less bad.

Computer lab is quiet, like it always is ever since Chad got the go-ahead to graduate himself from it. I could start skipping too if I wanted. Father said that I’ve demonstrated a sufficient grasp of the basics, and that I don’t need to write much in the way of code anymore. I told him that I wanted to make sure I really got the fundamentals down. He seemed very pleased with that. Mostly I want to reserve the dedicated time so I can keep working on my index.

I take a seat off on my own and scratch at memories for another hour, gaining very little.

I hate this. I hate myself. Most of all I hate Father for causing all of this.

DOPE-ME

I need to work on something else. Something that has nothing to do with my memory problems. Something to take my mind off of my stupid wrecked brain. I’ve been meaning to do a deep dive into the upgraded implant code anyway, but training on how to actually use it has always taken priority. I close my eyes and turn down my cloud senses, then start opening terminals in my overlay. Like with the old version, the control code is all available on the phone.

Wow. I thought the old code repository was huge, but had nothing on what’s in here now. Gigabytes of source. Hundreds of billions of lines of it. I feel hopeless despite my chemical tricks until I realize how well organized it is. I think I can actually find my way around in here. As I dig in, I can see that a lot of it is similar in principle to the construction libraries that I dived into before the upgrade, but on a massive scale. Files describing actions and reactions for a million contingencies.

Jeff’s whole worry about the AI started with the size of Father’s giant cloud, and that it seemed to adaptively work around the pipes he was laying when Father built the desalination plant. I start looking through the routines that Father used in building the walls of the superstructure. I get in the zone as I trace functions in and out of libraries trying to find the real explanation.

There it is. Jeff is an idiot, and I was an idiot for giving him as much credit as I did. There’s nothing adaptive in here. It’s not AI at all, just developers who thought through a whole lot of contingencies.

There are synergies that kick in when certain thresholds of bots are committed for tasks. When enough are put to work on something, some of the workers self-modify according to hardcoded patterns and specialize more efficiently than when they have to multitask. Carrier bots that aren’t flying reconfigure their ports for more limbs and fewer jets. Some bots become dedicated chemists processing materials and letting other bots feed them and take their products away. A dozen other optimizations that only trigger when you dedicate enough bots to doing a job that will last long enough to make it worthwhile. Collision detection is coded in, along with contingencies for when a wall that you’re building hits plumbing.

Father never had to micromanage anything. The code was all here to do it for him, painstakingly hand-coded. Looking at it, there must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of programmers who contributed. He’s probably had a whole division of SynTech dedicated to coding this stuff for years.

Idiot. Just because Jeff couldn’t figure out how Father did it, he assumed the worst possible explanation. Not that I was much smarter, I gave it a shot at being true early on. Of course, I had my own reasons to want to think the worst about Father.

There goes my last hope for my current memory breakdown not being my fault. I can’t blame an AI that’s eager to eat my brain for what’s happened to my mind. Just my own eagerness to commit a ton of neurons to get a set of robotic superpowers. I guess that’s sort of good news. Not having to worry about a world-ending, AI-powered nanobot swarm is nice. But it doesn’t do anything for my feelings of guilt. I lost Mom’s face all on my own. I can’t even blame Father for it. If I had paced myself like he told me to, I’d probably have thought of her more as I acclimated. I wouldn’t have lost her.

Maybe lunch will have dessert today. They do that sometimes. I could use some chocolate right now.

I open my eyes and re-engage my bot senses. I’ve been inside my electronic mind for hours. I didn’t even realize it. Time is funny when you’re in the zone with code. I’m surprised that Evan didn’t come grab me, but I’m sure he figured I was working on something important. Forget about lunch. It’s almost time for dinner. Better yet. They always have a dessert in the evenings.

I reach out my senses toward the cafeteria. The smell sense on the bots isn’t anything near the quality of a human nose, but it’s enough that I can tell they’re doing their stroganoff dinner tonight. I’ve never been a big fan of fungus, and they go heavy on the mushrooms. I think I’ll skip the entree tonight and just eat my feelings with some of the chocolate cake that I’m picking up in there. Evan owes me at least one dessert for all the times I’ve let him have mine.