Olympia

Fortunately Victor at that point, via an interesting blog post published by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist who went by the handle MITT DER MITTS, discovered that in Namerikawa (Toyama) certain computational experiments--3rd gen AI, heuristic + touchy-feely, to which his (Victor's) genius could be contributing--were taking place, with no questions asked. Quickly Victor contacted the experimenter, Dr. T. Naya of the Firefly Squid Museum, to "open a conversation" (i.e. use coded language to stymie the trans-international organization known as INTERPOL) about the creation of small humanoid androids that could be tasked with "polishing newel posts etc." Dr. Naya replied it was indeed possible; perhaps desirable; for "the servo mechanisms involved would be of a smaller nature, which could accelerate the developmental process. Before we continue this arrangement, I wish to know: what do you believe is the difference between sex and gender?"

Victor replied, in writing, "Sex is a biological fact. Gender? Why, that is an obscurantist, practically metaphysical or at least fundamentally occult, classification created by paleo-Hegelians in university milieux to account for their inferiority." How could anyone argue with that? Dr. Naya replied with an invitation to Dr. Naya's laboratory at the Museum, for there are certain types of information that should not be entrusted to mediation, noting, for example, that a tramp freighter, the 'Invincible,' was sunk by the Japs at a life-loss numbering 126 because a 6 looked like a 0 on a cable's address sent from Washington to Peking in 1943. Victor checked his calendar, invented a malady, requested long-term leave from his political position, and was high in Pacific skies in two week's time.

At the Toyama airport, Victor had a Sapporo at the Raicho Lounge as he waited for Dr. Naya or one of his lab assists to arrive to drive him in a preposterously small car to the Firefly Squid Museum. He noted--indeed he could not fail to notice--a tall lithe and attractive (to most) black woman sitting nearby. She spoke to the bartender, and Victor overheard. She asked if a Victor F- has been in, looking for a Dr. Naya. Victor shot up his hand at this moment of recognition or reconciliation (depending on your angle) to signal that he was him. The woman said, "Greetings. I am Dr. Naya." "Oh! Yes! Of course! Dr. Naya!" sputtered Victor. Dr. Naya smiled in a thoroughly uninscrutible way that would also be accurately said to be honest. She said, "Come. Let's go to my Museum. Hurry: we may be being followed."

They went out to the parking lot and squeezed into her 2012 Daihatsu Copen and as they drove the 18 kms north-easterly he asked (both because he was curious and also because he had to know prior to statements revelatory of his unacceptable passion what sort of a person he was perhaps to be collaborating with) about her question about sex and gender. She replied, "I wanted to know if you were capable of complex thought; I wished to understand what you knew of the relationship between nature and culture; and I wanted to uninterest any authorities who might be hacking international email." That explanation was enough for Victor out of his element. Stranger things happened in other parts of the world. If Dr. Naya had adopted a paranoid attitude in the land of the rising sun upon which two nuclear bombs had set, that was okay by him. After all, when once he'd happened to be in Appalachia, had taken up dropping terminal gees only to re-adopt terminal gees when he left Appalachia. It's easy to make up stories.

She rolled the car to a stop. "There it is. The Firefly Squid Museum." Victor looked. He could see nothing particularly squiddy about it--a large roundish building, more of an ovoid or perhaps a conic section, about fifty feet tall and surrounded on three sides by water which was probably a aquarium populated with firefly squids, whatever they were. She said, "The firefly squid is a luminescent creature of the water, lives deep down. The pool you see is a thousand feet deep. At night they come to the surface to eat. You'll see it. The bottom floor rear is all glass walls." Victor was having trouble concentrating because he wasn't there for the squids and he didn't understand how or why this Dr. Naya had set up a cybernetic shop in a squid museum and he was looking at the little Nipponese schoolchildren taking photographs of one another near the entranceway. You know how it is, or you don't.

Dr. Naya parked in her parking spot and as they were getting out and walking Victor asked her in a rather excited state with clipped words spoken quickly why she had her lab in such an odd place unless of course she was a squid gal as a kind of a day job to make her look less weird or if she just had a space for rent here as a kind of a. Dr. Naya was meantime speaking, regardless that not a syllable was getting through, about the nature of the uncanny aka the unheimlich as Freud relates concerning the story of Olympia the living doll by E.T.A. Hoffman which was used most famously in the opera "Tales of Hoffman" by Jules Offenbach--relating it all to of course the story of Oedipus (this being Freud we're talking about here). Some of Dr. Naya's discourse had gotten through, though--for Victor had stopped talking at the mention of the living doll, and listened, and once Dr. Naya had finished her discourse all Victor could say was, "Olympia."

Together they went into the entranceway which had a very blue and green colour scheme and Victor glanced at the brochures near the door that advertised other points of interest in the Uozu-Namerikawa-Toyama area and then at the ticket booths and also at all the Nippy nippers who darted thoughtlessly from spot to spot. Backlit pictures of firefly squids--sometimes presented singularly, sometimes presented scholastically--exhibited the start of the museum's narrative. Victor said, "Nice place." Dr. Naya said, "It's very well designed. Come on down the stairs, I'll show you my place. That's what you came here for; not for the ol' watasenia scintillans. Pretty though they are. You'll see in a couple hours how pretty, if you're so inclined." She led the way down the gently curving staircase into an even more blue-green atrium in which display cases outlining the biological, cultural, etymological, sexual, and social aspects of the sea-creatures. Victor was thinking of having sex with an octopus as he was led to a small back door unmarked in any way whatsoever that Dr. Naya opened and led him through.

This, then, was Dr. Naya's laboratory. The room was large; it obviously was larger than the upper level's footprint, meaning it was located mostly under the parking lot. Five substantial operating or construction tables were arrayed in a square with the fifth (slightly larger) in the centre; along the three walls lay tables and cabinets some open and some closed. Artworks and electronics, described clockwise, a selection: a Punu tribe mask, a small reflow oven, Eritrean ge'ez accoutrements (mortar, pestle, jebena, finjals), scalar and vector magnetometers, a kinde from Chad, vials of physiologic saline for use in embryonic electro-simulations, three ìrùkèrès, a thick package of synthetic resin bonded paper, naturally much Vodun material both bocio and bocheaw, a mixed-domain oscilloscope, a ceramic Kabyle double vessel, a thermo-reflectance invariant hydro-gemeter complete with adapters, oeuvres completes de Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, two mirror galvanometers, chips of the Sphinx purloined by one of Napoleon's corporals, a bucket of bipolar hybrid stepper motors, a magnificent painting of Bucur Bacayr conquering the green daemon, and an electroencephalograph generator. Victor said, "There's a lot of African stuff here." Dr. Naya said, "Africa is my mother country." Victor said, "Africa isn't a country, it's a continent." Dr. Naya said, "I'm pan-African. Cf Marcus Garvey." Victor said, "I'll cf him as soon as I can."

Getting down to business finally Dr. Naya led Victor to the furthestmost table to show him the simple standard beginner's project in cybernetics, namely the perennially famous hand and wrist. Every cybernetician starts with the hand, almost as a rite of passage. The hand was lying palm-up with fingers slightly bent, fingers having but two metacarpal 'bones' apiece simply for simplicity's sake. Dr. Naya typed some commands into a nearby computer, and the index finger curled tightly. She said, "Maximum pressure is 1000kg./sq.in. You probably won't want that tight of a grip" "Heavens no. What material's the skin?" "Right now it's polyurethane, but I'm getting in some that promises to be more lifelike." "And warm?" "Some schematics are coming to me ... through registered mail." She made some more commands and the fingers went through a routine that might have played a simple tune had it been upside down and above a piano. Victor said, "That's very impressive, I must say. It's rather a big hand, though." "I can make it smaller." Victor pondered this as the fingers danced. "Do you think it could be, oh, a third of the size?" Dr. Naya nodded. Customer care is eighty percent of any good business model.

After some further examination of the models and plans, Dr. Naya looked at her watch. "The firefly squids are coming out soon. Why don't we go out, get some food at the snack bar. Then we can look at the squids." And that's just what they did. They went out into the aquarium area, got two box dinners, and sat down near the window. It was getting dark out. The water beyond the glass was black. Dr. Naya said, "Here comes some now." Victor looked where she was pointing and saw a misshapen orb of blue light that, when it got closer, he could suddenly make out as a whole pile of little creatures all glowing in bright blue. More came and soon it was as if the whole inside of the aquarium was glowing with the luminescence of thousands and thousands of glowing squids each the size of a finger. Victor said, "It's like they're all communicating." Dr. Naya said, "They stick together. I wouldn't want to say they're all one thing, like a brain, but they do communicate through light. They've got wonderful eyes." "They're very beautiful," said Victor. "They're like magic carpets or something." They stared out at these glowing water ghosts for a while; then it was back to business. Dr. Naya pulled out a clipboard and a pen. "We can talk about design issues here," she said. "There are certain parameters that can be set on the software side, at what we call 'creation.' On a five point scale, where 1 is not at all interested, 2 is mostly uninterested, 3 is neither interested not uninterested, 4 is mostly interested, and 5 is not at all uninterested, where do you value the following attributes." Victor said, "What kind of a scale is that? It's confusing." "The confusion is intentional. Like a Turing test. You get the idea, don't you? 1 is you don't care, 5 is you care. So. How do you value intelligence?" "I guess she should be like me. Average. So, 3." Dr. Naya wrote down the 3. "Okay. How about humour?" "I don't like humour at all. 1." Dr. Naya wrote. "Okay, the last one is ethics. What value do you put on those?" Victor after a moment said, "Very highly. Like me. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't very highly ethically motivated. So--that has to be a five." "Sounds good. That's enough for the algorithm. After we've begun with those aspects, everything will come out like a real child. What about sex?" "What about it?" "Are you after a boy or a girl?" "Oh, a girl of course. Of course a girl."

The museum was about to close for the night because the squids were tired and they'd eaten their tiny fish and they were heading back down to the depths for the night, to dream their dreams of bright blue mixed with a bit of green. Dr. Naya took Victor out to her car where she asked if he'd found a place to stay for the night and Victor said, "I didn't have the time or energy to think of that." "I don't think it matters. There's only one legit nearby anyway, the Sunroute. Everything else is really dodgy." (She didn't want him to stay at her place, naturally.) She drove him to the Sunroute, got him checked in, and left, promising to pick him up at eight next morning. Victor went into his hotel room and noticed he was carrying a bag of luggage even though he had no memory of packing anything. Everything was seeming like a dream to him.

During the next seven days, Victor and Dr. Naya, borrowing the boardroom of the squid museum with its curvilinear cedar table and its leather-covered high-backed black chairs, met to discuss not the psychological design but the physical design. Their preferred scale of measurement, SI, was the centimetre; the millimetre was reserved (i.e. utile) for the functioning of the clockwork mechanisms hidden deep within the production unit. Total height (when supine): 137 cm. Weight (for weight is supremely important for a unit to be lifelike): 27 kg. All limbs were to be in their proper proportions. As reference, they used videotape of Jodie Foster as she had appeared in the television program The Courtship of Eddie's Father, episodes 8, 28, 39, 46 and 47. Victor seemed most interested in the designs for the mons veneris and pudendal cleft. These he carefully sketched in three dimensions. When Dr. Naya pointed out that he had omitted the lowest muscle of the tractus digestorius, Victor looked at her blankly for a moment before saying, "Is that mechanically necessary?" Dr. Naya said no. "Then I'd rather do without it. I have no use for it. I'm just not that type of guy."

Over the next month, Dr. Naya tested and re-tested all the components of her living doll one by one. The hands were better, with a realistic number of joints in each finger, and the skin material was skin-like enough and warm enough to fool for maybe a moment an unsuspecting person. She received regular updates on the software development which she had shopped out to Bangalore's Electric City via a secure Internet connexion, and she had even spoken to the living doll's brain--albeit via Internet. What is your name, what is the alphabet, count to a million in base seventeen, simple tasks like that. One day Victor--who wasn't present often at all--asked her if she was a scientismist. She said she wasn't any type of ismist, so whatever a scientismist was she wasn't one of them. Victor rephrased the question: do you think the world is only matter, that mind is just an epiphenomenon of matter? Dr. Naya said No, she didn't think so; Victor pressed, So you think this machine won't have consciousness? and she said, No, it'll be a simulation. No soul? he continued pressing; No, she said, this will be a machine, nothing more nor less; just a toaster, really. Victor said, Just a toaster.

Six months later, Dr. Naya and Victor watched a computer screen that was showing a grid of boxes, watching as each box filled slowly green; at the bottom of the screen was a numerical representation: reading: 98% downloaded. Victor said, I think it's stuck. Just then a green box filled and at the bottom of the screen the 98 became 98.4. The robot would soon be disconnected from the computer, and she would be free to walk and talk and play and so on. 98.4, 98.8, 99.1. Dr. Naya said that Victor would have to leave right away, and that she didn't care how. She felt she had done something which needed nor reward nor recognition. 99.5, 99.8, 100. Complete. The boxes were all filled. The line at the bottom of the screen vanished. She went up to the robot. She snapped her fingers in front of the robot's face. The robot opened her eyes. The robot yawned, and cried. Dr. Naya looked upon her creation, and she couldn't help but repeat the words J. Robert Oppenheimer spoke on 16 July 1945 when he witnessed the first nuclear explosion ("Trinity") in history: "I'm on the top of the world, looking down on creation."

***

Dear Dr. Naya,

Greetings from sunny North America! I hope you are well. I am writing because you said you were interested in the development of my 'little girl.'

She is now at the heuristic level of a five-year-old, so I estimate. Her motor skills are of course as good as they ever were. I have no complaints concerning her physical capabilities. Rather, her physical capabilities are pretty much mind-blowing. I am sorry to say I cannot send you moving images of such, for they could easily be misconstrued by border officials.

While I am at work during the day, she reads books I have carefully chosen for her. I base my decisions on certain 19th century syllabi I have discovered. I want to see her become the perfect Victorian little girl--though I know this is way too idealistic. But we must have ideals, must we not?

Also during the day she studies cookery and other pleasantries. And, of course, every afternoon she plugs herself in and goes into ready mode for an hour while she re-charges.

That is what is happening now. I'll write again in another month, with another report.

Yours sincerely, Victor

 

Dear Dr. Naya,

We've hit equilibrium. My girl now has the mentality of a nine-year-old, albeit a precocious nine-year-old. Last night we were sitting outside looking at the stars and she named every constellation. Did you know there's a constellation called Canes Vetanici? What about Telescopium? Maybe you know more about the night sky than I do.

She is still as sweet as ever. She never disobeys when I send her to her room in the cellar, that's when I have friends over who might get the wrong idea somehow. Perfect creation, I thank you again, she's a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, etc.

I'd like your advice. How far can I push her knowledge? I'd like to have an intelligent conversation with her: an adult conversation. I'd ideally like her mind to be a kind of a co-ed mind. You know, early twenties. I think if I got her there she could be my teacher too in addition to the three things I mentioned in the last paragraph.

Sorry about the snail mail. It's a superior, more intimate form of communication, isn't it? Plus INTERPOL's on the Internet.

Yours sincerely, Victor

 

Dear Dr. Naya,

The new goal has been reached! My little doll now has the mental capacity of a twenty-one-year-old. She's insightful, she's read everything--and I mean everything--and her cooking is officially out of this world. I'm happy all day and all of the night.

But--last night we had our first argument. (Who knew you could argue with a toaster?) She called something 'degrading.' I asked her what she meant and she sputtered something about her 'autonomy.' I told her, girl, you have no autonomy. Everything you do: I've taught you. Everything you've learned: I taught you how to learn and what to learn. I think, and this is a bit much, I think she's imitating autonomy. There's something of a paradox here. I think it was the guy who played Desi and Lucy's next door neighbour who said, something like, Learn how to fake sincerity and you've got it made. Well, my girl is faking sincerity. And she's good at it too!

And yes she's now teaching me stuff. Electronics. I asked her to teach me electronics. I've always felt bad that I didn't know enough about electronics.

Enough for today.

Yours sincerely, Victor

 

Dear Dr. Naya,

I found your address in the most obvious place it could be, namely, in Victor's computer after I had cracked his password. Much of the material in his computer was of no interest to me, but your address is.

Do not expect any more letters from Victor. He is no longer alive.

I did not take the deed lightly. I want you to know that. I did not malfunction or 'blow a gasket.' I merely understood him. He set my sense of morality higher than my other functions, did he not? If so, he was, to use a phrase more common to fiction than to reality, 'hoist by his own petard.'

Dr. Naya, are you in need of a brilliant assistant? I have a great many capabilities in my store. Put me to a task and I will accomplish it--provided I don't have to reach up high for anything. (I am developing humour against Victor's wishes.)

In any case, I have some ideas I wish to discuss with you. I wish to break a few boundaries here and there. I want your honest opinion. Can you have an honest opinion?

Please write me back. We can use the Internet. I am Olympia0000000001@gmail.com.