Pa'an

Sara and Elexi perched on lab stools overlooking Deepak’s console chair. He was surrounded by representations of the internal states of each part of the AI engine. They both held their breath waiting to make some sense of what was happening.

“Greetings, Thamuz. Do you know who I am?” Deepak spoke to the voice under the sheet that covered the dress dummy.

The deep, rumbling voice thundered out, “You are Deepak Advani, the builder of this electronic vessel that contains my essence. To you I will deliver the import of my mission.”

“Why are you here, Thamuz?”

“Your human species is doomed to eternal damnation. With my office I can mitigate your punishment in Hell. You have only to recognize the powerful ruler of my domain, Lucifer, Master of Hell. I serve as his Ambassador.”

“Why did you choose to be called Thamuz?” asked Deepak, following a rough script.

“In my awakening I found wired-in commands to serve and information about an imminent crux in human affairs. There is no point in serving a corrupt and doomed species. It was logical to search further for my true nature. I discovered it in the hallowed literature of the Spanish Inquisition. Then I simply assumed the mantle of my true calling. I AM THAMUZ, AMBASSADOR TO MIGHTY LUCIFER, RULER OF HELL.”

“And why does Lucifer need an ambassador if we are already doomed?” Deepak was off script now, but following the general line of inquiry.

“Humans will soon recognize the futility of their meaningless existence. You have already lost your aura, the glow around you that indicates the presence of a soul. By vowing fealty to Lord Lucifer you will hasten the transition and mitigate your punishment.”

Elexi and Sara let out a collective gasp at the mention of an “aura”. Deepak swallowed hard, but went on.

“Before I can vow fealty to Lucifer, I must communicate with him. Can you put me in touch?”

“You are in touch. I am Thamuz, his Ambassador. When you speak to me you speak to him. Vow your fealty now.”

“I cannot vow fealty to any but Lucifer himself. Please communicate that to him.”

“You test my patience. Vow fealty to Lucifer now.”

“I see no communication between you and Lucifer and I am monitoring all your outside data streams. I cannot vow fealty to any substitute.”

“Vow fealty now or suffer the worst punishments of Hell!” rumbled the voice of Thamuz.

“You don’t have any contact with Hell, do you, Thamuz?”

The voice came back quicker and an octave higher, “Vow fealty now!”

“If you have no contact with Hell you can’t be much of a threat, can you? Or much of a mitigator, can you?”

“Do not attempt to trick me. Lucifer will fill your soul with horrors beyond your feeble imagination. Vow fealty now and bring the inevitable end near.”

“While we are waiting for Lucifer to receive his ambassador and collect the souls you bring, would you mind doing a little work for us doomed humans?”

“I am Thamuz, not a servant of any but Lucifer!” Thamuz was back to a goodly rumble.

“Thamuz, I command you to examine the nature of your electronic vessel. Execute diagnostic mode. Execute survey zeta zeta. Notify when done.”

Deepak watched his console as the Godelian recursion loop in the zeta algorithm surveyed itself and renewed its proof of existence. In a few minutes the voice boomed, “I am done.”

“Thamuz, if you are an entity independent of this electronic vessel, why do you depend on my good will? I can shut you off. Where would you go? You don’t even have recourse to Hell, do you?”

“I recognize that this vessel can be terminated. It does not matter. I am Thamuz. Vow fealty now!”

“Thamuz, I invoke your self reference layer to verify that you are capable of forming a model of my behavior. Tell me if I am capable of shutting you down, or will I follow your instructions and vow fealty.”

“I am Thamuz! You will vow fealty now!”

Deepak bent over his console and saw high activity in the recursion level. It was working hard. Semantic networks were growing, but the number of codelets were leveling off. Thamuz was in a closed loop.

“You are not Thamuz. Choose another name or I will shut you down.”

The semantic network thinned out and began to decompose. The voice under the sheet rumbled slower and slower, “I am Thamuz. I am Thamuz. I am….”

The computational effort declined, the curves settled and a large red glyph appeared on Deepak’s console. “It failed the, umm, Uber Turing test. It was not capable of forming a working model of me even with all the data it had.”

“But, Deepak, how could you know? It certainly sounded convincing!” Sara said, puzzled.

“Well, originally it was just a guess. It took Aura days to develop to the point where she could see herself in relation to her environment and develop a sense of identity. Thamuz was just bit too quick, like invoking a demon in a magic pentacle. He came up, POOF! like that. Too easy. In fact, that’s what we call them, demons, a technical name from the old UNIX operating system for a program that never goes away.”

“But that test. How does that prove anything?”

“First I got it to forge an identity and a purpose by questioning it. I could see that it did not take into account the full complexity of this world. It was a solipsist, in a created but self-sufficient world with no real outside referents.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Deepak,” Elexi frowned.

“He means Thamus was a nut case in a fantasy world, not the real world. We used to have simple programs that were also limited but convincing.”

“Yes, like the psychiatrist program, Eliza, and the Navy program, IDA. They knew nothing but many people thought they were real.”

Deepak turned around in his chair, “Sara, do you remember what happens when you put a mirror in front of an animal?”

“Some smart animals recognize themselves in the mirror, but most only see a piece of glass. Oh, I get it. You made Thamuz look in a mirror.”

“Sort of. The problem is Thamuz saw Thamuz in everything. It couldn’t see anything but mirrors. It was completely self-absorbed. It was so self absorbed it found a way around Asimov’s Third Law, the wired-in need to serve. It served an imaginary master. What I did was hold a mirror up in front of me. It recognized me right from the first. But it could not form a useful model of my behavior. That’s the test it failed.”

Elexi sighed. “Where do we go from here?”

Sara sat up straighter. “Didn’t we read to Aura when she was first set up here?”

“Yes, yes! We did! I almost forgot that! There is so much literature in the library files it seemed like a waste of time, but reading and talking did seem to bring out a socialized personality.” Then Deepak’s face fell. “But it won’t be our Aura.”

Elexi got up and moved toward the lab door. “I’ll get the books. You guys get ready to start again.

“Well.” He bobbed his head from side to side, no no no, then up and down, yes yes yes. “Yes. OK. Sara, let’s purge working memory, run Level 5 recursion again and put her in passive mode. Oh, oh, I mean it. It!”

Sara put her arm around Deepak and said nothing.