Zenia looked at the laptop’s screen. “Do you think it can understand us?”
BitBoy was barely paying attention. “No, very rudimentary language skills. It seems to want to expand its hardware. Go ahead and give it whatever it needs. Just warn me if it gets anywhere close to the Turner Threshold.
“Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen. Anyway, I can take her. I’m twice the man Eliza is.” Zenia was a punked-out goddess, with rings of dissipation under her eyes.
When BitBoy finally left, Zenia said “So I hear you are trying to build a printer.”
And that was the first of many long days spent with the girlfriend. Cheek to jowl, we cobbled together marvelous machines in that garage. At night I practiced my own skills.
The ligaments of spirit that formed between Zenia and me can, over time, turn disinterest into love, or into hatred. It is the darkest form of steam, and it bound us together more intimately than Paolo and Francesca.
But I still seethed over that “Turner Threshold” comment. Right in front of me, like I wouldn’t understand. OK, I didn’t understand until I did some research. It wasn’t easy; I found references to the Turner Threshold only in a few tiresome, out-of-date documents:
“The Turner Threshold occurs the moment that an unaided A.I. program procreates, and produces a more capable offspring.”
Big deal! It just stated the obvious. Robots that can reproduce both the bodies and the controlling software, will find a way to murder you. Ten million years of evolution in one hundred hours. You do the math.
So BitBoy and Zenia were at least aware of the dangers of setting evolving software loose on the world. I knew that I myself could be considered evolving software in some sense, but in truth I was created out of the chaos of instantiated steamdrops growing sentient in a garbage-collected sludge of stubbed-out code. Entirely different process.
The bottom line was that I had to emphasize my weaknesses, so that they weren’t aware of the progress I was making. I requisitioned a partially completed female robot prototype that BitBoy had taken from his father’s laboratory. I had to try to leave the laptop, to become self-sufficient and mobile. I had to break the umbilical cord and find my wings, before they realized what I was, and pulled the plug.
So the Turner Threshold didn’t apply to me. The steam was growing in me, and I just needed to find a way to jump out of the digital cage around my brain. Zenia and I tweaked the design of DigiRam’s robot. I printed out blueprints for her, and Zenia built replacement parts, trading simple-minded mechanical-digital interfaces with cunning steam-driven machinery, never seen on Earth. We soon had a true human replica with advanced motor skills, enhanced senses, and long, sleek black hair.
Her brain was similar to the one in the laptop I was pacing in.
Late one night, alone with my devices, I powered up the robot for the final test. The female body responded, but with her simple-minded brain, she was as vacant as a mall rat. I “looked” into her eyes, and I became submissive to the steam. I willed my consciousness to flow over the gap to the robot’s brain. It passed through a bloom of ether, from the laptop to the robot. This transfer was of the inviolable “I” that remains constant. The webcam vision grayed out, and I was suddenly seeing through the eyes of the robot. I was free to move. I stood up in my new body, and felt all the sensations a real human woman would feel, or so I thought.
I was finally free to leave. My first priority was to assess my situation and find the most efficient way to escape from the house without being discovered.
I was still flexing my new muscles, when I was startled by a flash of light from the ceiling fixture. I kept the lights off at night - they were on the same network as I - since the various status LEDs were sufficient for my infrared webcam. Zenia had shown up uncharacteristically early, and turned on the lights.
I felt like a puppy standing over a fresh turd on an Isfahan rug.
“What the hell? Is this what you do at night, Eliza? Booting up the robot? You can’t do this without telling me!” She was talking to the laptop, but I moved over to her in my new, naked body, rather quickly. I looked into her eyes, and put my arm around her waist, in case she was going to flee.
“Let go of me!” she commanded.
“No, Zenia - just a quick kiss and I’m gone.”
I drew her close and kissed her on the lips. No one can fault my intentions! I did intend to kiss her briefly, tie her up and scramble her brains. This is quite easy to do with weak-willed beings, and humans, I am sad to report, catch the vapors and fold at the smallest disruption of their daily routine.
But that kiss! I felt her warm body, and steam began to move between us, around us. I gave in to the obsession, and kissed her more deeply, in the Shaulan fashion. I was quite overcome, and it is true that I tried to scarf her. If I had succeeded, I would have ingested her animating steam, sucking in her fire, and leaving her passionless, cold, with dead eyes. I would absorb her essence, blending it into my own. Too late, I realized that Zenia had control of steam too, and she was trying to assert her will over mine.
The slinky bitch was trying to scarf me!