ANA Reborn by Carl Facciponte - HTML preview
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Chapter 2
rancine stood at the podium in the meeting F room a week before animating Ana.
“Okay, gang, let’s continue with our last two staff
reports.
We’ve
loaded
the
base
programming module into our new AI’s, and we will activate them in three days.” A cheer went up from the engineers and scientists. She continued, “Each department completed their pre-animation checks with no outstanding issues.” She hesitated for a moment before letting out her breath as she shook her head, “except for some of you clowns twittering like prepubescent sixth-graders when we activated Rhett’s sexual organs. ...Okay, we can all stop laughing now.
Please, let’s be professional about it.” Francine continued with a warning glare. “And NO, there will not be any after-hours testing of any AI organs by members of the staff.” More laughing.
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Francine gave everyone the evil eye. Finally, they quieted down, although grins persisted.
She looked over her people, and with a wave of her right arm, said, “programming and hydraulics department heads, please give your reports. Akai, you are up first.”
Akai Gua took the podium at the front of the room and bowed from the waist. Her small, birdlike voice was pleasant to the ear. A Chinese accent and sentence structure enhanced the aura as she spoke in hesitating English.
“We have tweaked subroutines in the base programming to increase effectiveness with linking and processing the external information to our AI.”
A mechanical engineer interrupted. “So, what’s the bottom line, Akai? How does it work better?”
“Easy,” Akai said. “Without technical explanation, the improvements allow AI’s to learn much faster. Makes AI even smarter if you want to think about it. Not in data sets, data handling is easy. They can learn socialization factors faster. The new base programming facilitates nano-rod gel technology in the android 12
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brain. Allows it to make new nano-connections fast. It can make brain synapses so to learn on its own. That will make their assignments easier.
Makes them like humans. Outside world will think they are genius level.”
“Any more questions?” Akai asked. No one spoke up.
“Very good then,” Francine said. “T’Quan Taylor, you’re up next.”
“Hi everyone,” T’Quan said with a grin.
“How y’all doing? I’m stoked. We’ve made some significant improvements to the hydraulic and electric servo systems in Rhett and Ana. Gabriella was fast and strong, but these two will be faster and stronger. The new hydraulic and servo systems run at a higher pressure and increased voltage. This allows for faster reactions and a 50%
increase in strength. You’re probably wondering what this buys us, huh? Well, here’s where it gets good. We approach the ultimate soldier concept with the faster and stronger AI and the new skin and muscle designs. They will pass for humans but have abilities that we mere mortals don’t possess. Any questions?”
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Scott raised his hand to speak. “Will the female AI be able to shoot bullets or rockets from her bra? Laser eyes? Anything like that?”
“Scott, you’re very new here. What component are you working on?”
“I’m writing the program for the pseudo-digestive system, so I don’t have a complete systems understanding yet. I guess there’s no inbuilt weaponry, then?”
“That’s correct—no inbuilt weapons of any kind, other than their bodies and personalities.
Blasters would be a touch obvious and much harder to design in the real world. Francine, can we give this newbie a detailed tour of our facility?”
Francine smiled. “Yes, we certainly will.
Unfortunately, we’ve had our schedule pushed up by Brigadier General Lance Coopers, so we had to drop Scott into the workflow cold-turkey.
She continued, “At any rate, Coopers is expecting us to animate our android’s on time.
He was a little hard to work with when he was Colonel Coopers. Now that he is General Coopers, well, you can guess for yourselves. The animation must be flawless. I want everyone to 14
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triple-check their systems. We can’t afford to have anything go wrong. See me immediately if there is the slightest hiccup when running your start-up checklists and final diagnostics. Understood?
Good. That is all. Dismissed.”
Scott turned to T’Quan. “What’s the deal with this General Coopers guy? He sounds like a badass.”
“Yeah, he is. Comes across nice enough if all is going well, but be sure of one thing, he always gets his way. If he wants a successful animation in three days, we need to make it happen.”
“What happens if we miss the deadline?”
“I’m not sure, Scott. But the General can get mean. Nobody is saying it out loud, but the word in the lab is that Coopers had something to do with Gabriella’s death. No one has made a direct link, but it feels likely.”
“Wow! Who was Gabriella?”
“Gabriella was our first AI. Everyone loved her. She’ll be impossible to replace.”
Scott tilted his head, questioning the statement. “You all loved an AI?”
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“You don’t understand, Scott; Gabriella was as real as you and me. She was a beautiful woman until a terrorist shot her in Times Square.
Everyone here has always been a little suspicious of the whole thing.”
“Sounds like you guys were actual friends, but she was a machine,” Scott said as he gestured to the side with both hands.
“It’s hard for you to get how we could bond like that with her, but wait three more days.
You’ll understand. Promise.”
“You people have a very unique place here.”
T’Quan looked out over the lab. “Yeah, sure do. It’s almost like a dysfunctional techie-nerd family, but we all fit in with each other.”
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