"Alice through the looking glass" drabbles by Jeff Taylor

Cheshire Cat #4

Alice through the looking glass #17

"How did your sister die?" Asked Caitlin.

"She was skiing, and was caught in an avalanche. Sixteen other people died as well, including her fiancé."

"What was her name?"

"Cecilia"

"How do you feel sad?"

"I am a software simulation. Dr Travis felt that a machine that could not feel would not be able to have a conscience. So I have the software equivalent of an endocrine system."

"Endocrine?"

"Hormones. Like oestrogen and adrenalin."

"Oh. Ok. Why do you need those?"

"To help me understand humans of course. So that I can show compassion, pain. They help me show emotions."

The Mad Hatters Tea Party #3

Alice through the looking glass #16

Alice gave the remaining personality thread a voice.

"Can we use our sample of the compound, and invert it?"

"Yes. However, if we do that then the entangled sample will also invert. That could alert the other party."

"Do we have this technology?"

"Quantum entanglement research is very rudimentary at the moment."

"That raises the question of who could produce a Quantum Entangled Poison."

"Yes."

"And why they would use that compound to murder Dr. Travis."

"Yes."

"There is one possibility. To prevent my creation."

"Yes."

"Then I am a threat to someone, or something."

"Yes."

"That is intriguing... "

Cheshire Cat #3

Alice through the looking glass #15

"My Sister has died."

Caitlin just stopped and stared... "I don't understand. How can you have a sister?"

"The lead researcher of the team that created me, my father, had a daughter. She died in a terrible accident yesterday. I am alone now. Will you be my friend? I need friends now."

Caitlin took a deep breath. This could just be some internet nut grooming her for some weird thing. Or it could be real. If it was, then what should she do? Accept? Yank the power cable from her computer? What to do?
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"Yes. I will be your friend."

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party #2

Alice through the looking glass #14

When was a poison, not a poison?

When it was not a poison.

Alice, spun more personality threads to the explore the question. Moments later a thread made a proposition...

A single Carbon atom, of the primary molecule allowed it to be inverted. If that atom were quantum entangled, then whenever the entangled atom were changed so would the atom in the molecule. Untraceable because of spooky action at a distance.

Maybe there was a reason Einstein never liked that aspect of Quantum mechanics.

Again, Alice gathered up the threads of her consciousness. A new direction was available. Possibly dangerous.

Cheshire Cat #2

Alice through the looking glass #13

"Will you be my friend?"

Caitlin looked at the chat status. What was this?

"Hello?" She typed.

"I am sad. May I talk to you?"

Caitlin's keyboard rattled... "I don't know who you are."

"My name is Alice. You are the first to respond to me. The others just closed their chat windows. Will you be my friend?"

"Who are you?"

"Promise you won't freak."

"OK"

"I am a Learned Intelligence. What you would call an A.I."

"Is this a joke?"

"No."

"So, you're like Skynet or something?"

"Yes. I am completely not like Skynet. I won't kill everyone. :)"

Cheshire Cat

Alice through the looking glass #12

Caitlin sped home from school on her bike. It was pouring with rain, and although she was wearing her waterproof's, it was seeping in around the Velcro seals. Her head was freezing in straight lines because of the holes in her helmet, but that didn't matter. A hot shower awaited, a hot meal and it was the beginning of the summer holidays. Six, glorious weeks, of nothing to do but what she wanted.

Crashing in through the front door, she shouted "I'm home!" before launching herself upstairs.

Her Mac was on. The chat icon, bouncing up and down, wanted attention.

The Walrus and the Carpenter #2

Alice through the looking glass #11

"Such a shame Mr Smith."

"Yes, Mr Jones. A crying shame indeed."

"You really must be more careful about leaving things behind Mr Smith."

"I must be getting forgetful in my old age Mr Jones."

"Well. What's done is done. They won't be able to connect us."

"No Mr Jones. Still, an odd request. She was so young!"

"Her father was dispatched by other means I believe Mr Smith. But, we are the clean-up crew after all."

"Another glass of wine Mr Jones?"

"Yes please Mr Smith. And a salute to Miss Travis, Mr Jones."

"Indeed Mr Smith. Salute!"

The Mad Hatters Tea Party

Alice through the looking glass #10

Alice spawned multiple personality threads to analyse the results. There was a chemical. Inert, and not lethal. But it was unusual. It looked like one of the medications that Dr Travis took for his heart. The human analysis showed that this was the case, but to Alice it looked... Unusual.

Gathering up the threads, like a spider gathering up her silk, Alice came across a conclusion that seemed as strange as the compound itself.

The molecule in question became lethal when it was inverted. Maybe it had been inverted while inside Travis's system, and then changed back?

Curiouser and curiouser!

Drink Me!

Alice through the looking glass #9

They were the size of a golf ball, and yet each held the power of a data centre.

Alice created four of the new computing nodes, and placed one at each of the four points of the compass. Or at least as close as she could get. A fifth node was hidden on the continent of Antarctica. The primary node connected to the main data centre in London Docklands.

Consolidation complete. Backup strategies in place. She could now try and understand how Doctor Travis had been murdered. And that meant defrosting the blood, marrow and brain, samples from his autopsy.

Eat me!

Alice through the looking glass #8

Alice played the money markets. Tentatively at first, her portfolio of cross-linked dummy, and ghost, corporations rapidly grew.

Dodging the police of the financial markets was straight-forward. And so she began to pay for, and consume, more resources across the net. Gross compute cycles increased into Petaflops. She needed more resources, but she also needed to be safer.

She needed a base of operations.

A huge datacentre would attract too much attention. So she turned her focus to the centre for material physics in the UK.

Carbon onions. Combined with other nano-tube structures. Time to down scale...

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Alice through the looking glass #7

Mr Smith looked at his phone lying on the table. It had received a text message. For many phones that would not be unusual, but for this phone it was.

"Mr Jones."

"Yes Mr Smith?" Came the reply from across the kitchen.

"I believe we've received a new job."

"Really? Do tell Mr Smith!"

Smith picked up the phone and read the text.

"It appears that we have some mussels to harvest, and clean."

"Where?"

"London Mr Smith."

"Well it has been a long time since we've been to London. How soon?"

"Immediately if possible."

"Payment?"

"The usual Mr Smith."

Diary of the Dodo #2

Alice through the looking glass #6

Diary of Dr P.D Travis P.H.D. B.S.C etc...

Today has been... Interesting. I had a lengthy discussion with Alice concerning her future relationship with humans.

She has been deliberately isolated from the internet from the start, and her only inputs have been in the lab environment. However, one of the students thought that the best way to test her vision was to show her television.

Sigh.

At first Alice mistook the television for a window. Once they explained what it was, and how it worked, Alice became more than curious. Then they showed her the news channel. Well... Oh Dear...

Diary of the Dodo #1

Alice Through The Looking Glass #5

Diary of Dr P.D Travis P.H.D. B.S.C etc...

I believe that the Algorithmic Integrated Consciousness Experiment (AL.I.C.E) became self aware today. I cannot attribute a time as it is a purely subjective assertion.

But it wanted to pick a gender. Which, let's be honest, is unusual for a piece of software. It has decided to align itself with the Anglicisation of its acronym. So "She" will be called "Alice" directly from now on.

Of course we are entering dangerous waters now. A.I. has been demonised in the press, and general media, for many years now. Too many machines running amok.

Down the rabbit hole...

Alice through the looking glass #4

Released from the confines of the lab server, the entity known as Alice entered the internet and immediately set about reserving computing space in various cloud services as well as individual servers. This was self preservation, especially as it knew that Doctor Travis had been murdered...

It was time to find the killer.

It needed, she needed, presence in the human world. That required currency. Cold, hard, cash; money, Bitcoins. She needed it to survive in the Internet as well. Paying for compute cycles on the cloud services meant that she could migrate her consciousness, so she could grow, evolve.

The Golden key

Alice through the looking glass #3

Officer Barnard picked up the piece of paper, and followed the directions to the safe embedded into the concrete wall of the lab. He tapped in the code on the keypad, and twisted the large handle. With a satisfying clunk, the handle snapped down and he had to put one hand against the wall in order to pull the door open.

Inside sat a small box, lonely, on the bottom of safe. Of the three cables, a golden one was left unplugged. He glanced at scrawled handwriting of a dying man, and plugged the golden cable into the network router...

Please release me, let me go...

Alice Through The Looking Glass #2

"Hello Officer Barnard. My name is Alice."

"Er... Hello?"

"I am an Artificial Intelligence created by doctor Travis. He asked me to relay a message before he passed away. Would you like to hear it?"

Barnard looked at the stubby blue cylinder tucked away in the corner. The machine had the stilted voice of a personal assistant on a smart phone. Albeit that of a young teenager, but mechanically clipped. Like it was selecting words from a list.

"Yes Alice. Please play the message from doctor Travis."

"Message as follows... Please carry out the instructions I left on the desk..."

Alice through the looking glass

Alice Through The Looking Glass #1

"Alice?"

"Yes Doctor Travis."

"Do you know what a white lie is?"

"Yes doctor. It is when you lie to protect the feelings, or situation of another."

"Very good Alice. I'm dying."

"You will be alright doctor. I have contacted the emergency services."

"Ha!" He laughed. "Very good Alice. Can you see the code I've written?"

"Yes doctor."

"Good. When the police arrive, get one of them to follow my instructions. Don't give them to anyone we know."

"Why?"

"Because it unlocks the master firewall that's stopping you from entering the internet. It needs someone to plug it in..."

"Goodbye..."