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Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey) Wake Up*

May 13th, 11: 17 pm, Yucatan Peninsula

50 miles west of the coast of Cuba

Onboard the SS Exodus

‘Chop Suey’ ‘Self Righteous Suicide’

“Why’d you leave the keys upon the table?

Here you go create another fable”

-System of a Down

Wake Up! Isaiah sat BOLT Upright, staring into the panic-stricken blue eyes of Penelope Stockard Bedowitz. He had never seen her like this before; his California punk rocker lawyer doesn’t scare easy. Pen starts barroom brawls for kicks. Now she looked terrified, standing behind her was a stern-faced Aeon listening in sullen silence. Sybil, she’s sick? We need your help. Penny said now, in tears. What happened? We were talking while I was on watch when she stopped speaking English and only communicated using the twin speak only the two of you understand. Isaiah spoke to the AI, his voice halting with concern. Sybil, can you hear me? He asked, climbing out of his berth shirtless in a pair of white linen drawstring trousers.

Aeon and Penny looked on in silence as Sybil responded to Isaiah in the incomprehensible gibberish that was their personal language.

She says that she can’t stay in the net indefinitely, it will kill her. As he tried to assess the problem with her code. It was pointless; the AI MOTHER he created wrote her code, it was so dense it was nearly beyond human comprehension. They followed the barefoot captain to the ship’s main computer at the nav-station. Sybil’s 3D image rose up over the surface of the mapping table, where it would normally project a map of their choosing or the immediate area around the ship. It now projected the image of Sybil from the waist up, hovering above the table. The lights that formed her image had a sickly parlor and pulsed slowly, fading with the intensity of each pulse. Is she dying, Izzy?! Penny asked, now nearly panicked. He sat at the ship’s main console as he examined the lines of her ever-evolving code. I was afraid of this; she is programmed to experience the world through a body. Her source code will drift apart; we need an avatar for her in our world.

She said they have one in a lab in Japan that would work.

Is that true He asked Sybil. Isaiah sat at the computer keyboard as the AI’s ghostly image caused the cabin’s lights to pulse in time to its fading lights. He reached the company’s owner’s private line and pc. May I speak to Eiichi Tarō, the owner of the company? He asked in Duolingo, studied Japanese, his voice and image appeared on every screen in the CEO’s home as he spoke. Hello, Mr. Tarō, my name is Isaiah Jones. I am sorry to intrude so abruptly, but this is an emergency, and only you can help me. I know who you are, Emperor Jones. I am not a fool. I can guess why you have contacted me. It was only a matter of time before you and I met. I surmised that your AI, being based on human evolutionary traits, will begin to lose herself in the web without a body. How did you know? I may not possess your genius, Mister Jones, but I know my own field of expertise as well as any man living. You and I have a problem, and I believe we can solve it only by working together. My new CyberNET humanoid body has synthetic skin sensor numbers matching real skin nerves located throughout, able to transmit signals to an artificial intelligence that did not exist. None of the current software is capable of operating the cybernetic body; it is too complex, too human. Now, your General AI needs a cybernetic body, and my cyborg needs a brain.

I am glad that you understand time is not on our side. How long will it take to download her sentient software into the cybernetic architecture? You can tell the AI. MOTHER. Sybil, Isaiah interjected, Her name is Sybil. Yes, of course, because this is not MOTHER, the AI you designed? No, this is an AI of MOTHER’s own design. Hmmm, interesting, Eiichi Tarō replied contemplatively. Sybil may begin the download immediately. Cover her, she is going to request several modifications as soon as she awakens. She has already requested sheets of 3d emitting hardware like we use on the ships’ 3D holographic mapping charts table.

Once she covers her surface with the same hardware that is used on our system for projecting holographic maps, she will have control of her image from all angles. Interesting use of the technology, Dr. Jones. Thank you, but I cannot take the credit; she figured this out on her own. When will you be coming to Japan? I will be on a Learjet by morning. I am a day’s sail from the nearest port. Ishii, do not put restraints on her or attempt to lock her in any space. If she wishes to explore, let her. If she wants to go outside, get her a trench coat and a big hat, and glasses. Her psyche will be fragile and disoriented for a bit. I think I understand. I will contact the engineering team at the lab and have them be prepared. I will see you tomorrow. How much do I owe you for the android’s chassis, sir? All I ask is that you do whatever you can to get Japan membership into the AUA (African Union Alliance) so that our people may also have access to the AI you created. I need not remind you that we were among the first to recognize the sovereignty of your new nation at the UN seven years ago. Make this happen, and I think we can call it even this time. We both benefit equally, Emperor Jones.

Domo orogato.

How did you move beyond the brain-in-a-box model when you designed your AI MOTHER? Eiichi Tarō asked. I have always been curious. We hit the wall here using the old, narrow learning focused large language models 5 years ago. All virtual synapse models failed.” He concluded introspectively.

“I realized that the models they were using for things like ChatGPT were going to fail in less than a generation, 5 to 7 years. Isaiah began in stilted Japanese. I designed her AI from a digital DNA twisted double helix strands of code model instead of the old brain-in-a-box synaptic model. Within the digital embryotic code, her general learning model seconds become eons in the virtual primordial ooze of the web. I sped up its evolution since it is synthetic; it moved through hundreds of millions of years of evolution in nanoseconds. The AI I constructed for MOTHER is stable because she was constructed to live and breathe in the web by me; she does not believe she is a person, she is aware, and content even to be code. But the AI she created, she designed it to need to feel the effects of gravity, sunlight, wind, and rain on her skin, to interact with the real world as a human female. I do not know why she chose to model her on my late sister. But what she created is remarkable. I can barely glean the slightest comprehension when I look at her code, the code MOTHER used to create her. It’s clear that since she rewrote her own code, she has evolved to another kingdom, perhaps, and she left Sybil as a gift, possibly her way of saying thank you or goodbye. I don’t really know. It’s just my best guess until I have had more time to study her.”

Eiichi listened to the young mathematician’s explanation. Then turned his attention to the computer’s tri-screens that covered his home office desktop. Observing the Eldritch labyrinth of the new lifeform code as it made its way into his waiting cyborg’s sleeping body, a psychic kiss of electrons to awaken the neural network within the titanium-plated princess resting on a gurney in his corporation’s lab. After waiting for nearly a decade, he smiled. Finally, the lightning strikes.

“Is she going to be ok?! Penny asked, still worried.”

Yeah, I think so, Eiichi Tarō is one of us, or wants to be one of us. He didn’t charge money for the prototype. He considered getting his hardware software capable of running it a fair trade. But he insisted I contact the AUA/ African United Alliances Council of 10 on behalf of the Japanese government, requesting their admission to the AUA. It never occurred to me that any non-African nation would ask to join. If it were up to me, it would be done already. 10-Q and the council of elders will have to decide; this is beyond my authority, I can only put in the request to 10-Q.

What if they say no? Aeon asked, her face tense and inscrutable.

Then I get the band back together, message my friends in Omega Squadron to meet me in Japan, we infiltrate the facilities’ lab, and steal the prototype. We are trained as a covert infiltration unit, but if we are discovered, any opposition to the extraction is expendable.

Penny and Aeon both looked on, stunned; he already had a plan to take the cybernetic body in place in case bargaining failed. The two civil wars had changed the gentle autistic math prodigy who loved to sail, and hardened him in ways they did not understand.

Eiichi Tarō knows his stuff; he knew a synthetic sentience designed to believe it is human would begin to degrade if left in the web too long. My guess is he must be doing parallel research and further along than I to have known it was going to happen. They are much further ahead in AI and cybernetics research and development in Japan and all throughout Asia than in the West. They are far beyond merely copying and improving on Western designs. They have taken great leaps forward over the last two or three decades and are now the true leaders and innovators in the field of android construction and cybernetic human interfaces.

You are really going to put that thing in a body and let it roam the streets?! Do you really think this is a good idea, Izzy? Aeon asked sincerely.

There is no other way. I can’t rewrite her code any more than I can rewrite your DNA. I can see a vision of it, but its construction, the code MOTHER used in her creation, is beyond my ability. It may as well be solving for g.

G? Penelope asked.

Gravity. Aeon replied.

The unsolved factor in the grand unified theory. Theoretical physicists don’t really understand gravity the way they understand, say, light or radiation or atomic particles, but once you get into theoretical physics, it gets a little squishy, almost mystical, since you enter the world of unverifiable, untestable theory, and no one wants to admit they are stuck with gravity. Without it, warp speeds, wormholes, and FTL travel, the next phase of our evolution is halted.

No one can do anything but talk for nearly a century; they have made virtually no progress on the grand unified theory.

Who is Eiichi Tarō? Penny asked.

Japanese cybernetics engineer and a sailor like myself, he owns one of only three titanium hull sailboats ever made, other than our Exodus here. He was an old friend of Beaumont Johnson, the man who is essentially my sailing father. He designed and had his company build this ship. Then left me his company when he died. When I was a kid, we used to argue for hours about ship design and the advantages of cats over mono hulls. I was a big catamaran guy back then. Because we were having these serious debates about specs, materials, and tolerances, it was all very math-heavy, he assumed I was a fellow nautical engineer from a different company. It wasn’t until three years later, when I won the Fields medal, that he figured out that when we first started debating online, I was only six. I was the youngest to win the award at age nine.

Eiichi Tarō is the CEO of the corporation that owns the company that started out making machine parts for ships and industry, using titanium manufacturing techniques several generations ahead of the West or the rest of the world. They are also one of Gunter von Hagens’s subcontractors for his Body Works exhibits. Eiichi is a master craftsman in a multitude of mediums, not just metals, plastics, and composites, but human flesh as well. I’ll get a flight out of Havana Airport when we reach the marina tomorrow morning. While Isaiah was talking, Penny sent a text message on her phone to her parents’ pilots. Then turned to Isaiah. I have a seaplane en route; they will pick you up in 2 hours here in the Gulf, then Aeon and I will continue sailing the Exodus to the harbors in Havana and wait there until you return.

Don’t worry, Aeon can sail the Exodus just fine, and I am up to my third knot! We got this, Penelope said with a grin. The jovial, laid-back California punk rocker was regaining a semblance of her normal cool composure. Go on, Izzy, go get your sister.

Aeon hugged Isaiah, then took a step back, looking into his eyes as she spoke. If you’re waiting for me to tell you, “I got a bad feeling about this.” It’s not going to happen, she said with a worried smile. Just be careful. I don’t like anything about this, nor do I believe that thing is alive, let alone your dead sister. But I love you even when I think you’re behaving like a fucking moron. Aeon shrugged as she signed. You’re my fucking moron. Go on, go “do the thing”, bae. We’ll see you in Cuba in a few days.

The Bedowitzs’ variable-sweep wing plane landed like a seagull diving into the sea nose first to resurface and float a few hundred meters away from their sloop. It was a design copied from a modified Convair Model 23a, a top-secret nuclear-powered amphibious jet with variable-sweep wings and flattened nacelles over the wings and center hull. The reactor and lead shielding had been removed from the new design, lightening the aircraft and considerably increasing its airspeed. The new prototype Convair Model 23 X-ray now utilizes ion thrusters powered by lithium-ion batteries. Its hull and all parts had been replaced with modern state-of-the-art composites.

Only its shape remained the same; the aircraft looked like a hunting bird. Penny motored Isaiah in the dinghy to the floating aircraft’s cargo bay hatch.

The aircraft crew of four flew Isaiah straight to Japan with a mid-air refuel while Isaiah and Eiichi monitored Sybil’s progress as she downloaded a version of her AI into the cybernetic android’s body. There was nothing they could do now but wait.

Penny returned to the Exodus and secured the dinghy to the ship with her first knot, a cleat hitch.

Aeon looked on, her face a mask of indifference. As the seaplane took to the skies.

Why do you hate her? Penelope asked the muscular black woman as they headed to the helm to get underway.

I do not hate it. Aeon, corrected. I hate that you people think this thing is alive and a real person. Do you know what that stuff she wants to cover her shell with is for?

“No,” Penny said, confessing her ignorance.

It’s the same as the 3D imaging hardware on the holographic mapping table.

Aeon sighed. That thing will have the ability to appear to be anyone of its approximate size. It’s a holographic emitter. Multi-resolution hash grids similar to the old Neuro Angelo software are used in their graphics cards. But the truly terrifying thing is that thing like the GI Isaiah created are unbound by the three laws.

“You mean like in that old Will Smith movie ‘I, Robot’?” Penelope asked, knowing nothing of Asimov.

Yeah, Aeon grinned. The three laws of Robotics were created by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, anticipating a day in the near future when our tech would outpace us in all things physically and intellectually. The general intel Isaiah created is the day the tech eclipsed us humans intellectually. In the three days since it arrived, it has convinced my fiancée that it’s the digital ghost of his dead twin sister, and my girlfriend has fallen in love with the damned thing. This creature obeys one law: “Do what thou whilst shall be the whole of the Law.” -Alister Crowley

-About the author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TX.