Collaborative Working - 20/Jul/2012
Mid December 2009, Dublin.
No legs had been broken. Or other body parts. They had the two cached robots, from Australia. And it looked like a good name for the thieves would be 'Boskone'. They'd disappeared without a trace.
Arthur'd spoken to his science fiction friends, and 'Boskone' was apparently from the "Golden Age", the 'Doc' Smith "Lensman" books. Space opera bad guys, involved in all sort of criminality, but particularly drugs, and slaving. It figured that there'd be people who saw handwavium, and asked "How can this make me money, and I don't care who gets hurt".
Alice was delighted to be reunited with them; they were the closest thing she had to family. She'd decided on the surname 'Melbourne'. Alice worked with Jenny, to figure-out exactly what'd happened when she was waved. Jenny remarked she was learning engineering at an amazing rate, faster than she thought she herself'd have done. Motivation?
Looking back, it seemed almost inevitable. But, Jenny hadn't seen it coming, either. Alice had waved up 'Bea' and 'Chaz', three second-hand phones in each. What no one expected was that Alice'd find herself looking out through two new sets of eyes.
She'd deliberately put SIM cards in all the six phones, with their mutual phone numbers on, so they could all easily talk to each other. Instead, all three brains seemed to be 'running' her, and no amount of shut-downs, SIM card shuffling, and reboots seemed to fix this.
She'd even tried a Faraday cage test - they were all still in contact with each other. Jenny, returning from a consultancy trip 'up', sighed, and took Alice out to do clothes shopping for her two new bodies.
The thinking speed of an AI seemed to give Alice time to simulate three different persona, but she called two of them 'masks'. When she relaxed it was clear she was still one person in three bodies. She seemed to think she'd murdered her sisters, before they'd even been born.
Jenny wasn't happy about Alice's state of mind, so she suggested Arthur involve her in the new factory project. She seized on this distraction with all six hands, and was soaking up new skills at a remarkable rate. Jenny remarked it was social skills she herself'd been lacking when waved-up; Alice seemed to have started with these and was acquiring technical ones.
As sometimes seemed to be the case, the answer to the factory issue was 'all of the above'. New Body Builders were being built for long-term heavy-duty production use, and in the process scaled-up into something it took a crane to move around. Alice was really pleased to be the AI that made the factory run. Human staff would be employed, as well, to work with Alice on all parts of the production process, except the actual robot frame building.
Alice'd learned another trick. Apparently if she made a cable connection to a phone, then waved it up, it would run a distributed fragment of her mind. This didn't make her any smarter, but it certainly allowed her to split her attention far more ways. While these 'mind phones' could still make normal calls, her mental field didn't seem to be using RF to exchange thoughts, and worked at least over tens of miles. Later, they discovered, world-wide.
She'd been on a privacy and ethics course (or Bea had, anyway). Now she proposed that all factory staff get and carry a waved phone, at work, as part of their terms and conditions. And could use it for personal calls, too, at reduced call rates. She'd keep people's private affairs, private.
Arthur was dubious. Jenny remarked it would massively assist cooperation, safety, and probably help a lot with industrial espionage. Kevin Wright commented that group minds weren't covered by privacy legislation, though the rest of them thought that a bit disingenuous. Jenny said she'd been unsure, but she'd run it past Sarah, on her last visit, and she seemed to think it was a good idea. So it was settled.
Alice had found time to acquire a boyfriend. Or rather, the 'Chaz' part of her handled this. A rather shy sociology Masters student, who seemed fascinated by her, on a professional and romantic level. Kevin Wright suggested she not get 'distracted' while operating heavy machinery. Which caused some embarrassment, and, Jenny suggested to Arthur, private experimentation.
They'd had a bit of a shock. Jenny got permission to take Alice 'up' to see Kelly, who was fascinated with the prospect of meeting her. Alice and Kelly had chatted, on a secured line, quite a bit before the visit. Everything was OK until they got about 50 miles up. Alice shut-down.
Jenny regretted not having a better communication system as they continued on their flight plan to O'Neill Station. On arrival Kelly and Jenny checked Alice out, and could find nothing wrong. Messages from Dublin revealed Bea and Chaz were OK, as were all the mind phones, but they had suddenly lost Alice. Jenny didn't, quite, hurry her consultancy work. But, it was agreed the less urgent parts would be done either from Dublin or on a later trip.
At about 50 miles up on the return trip Alice suddenly revived. Initially she didn't know what'd happened, but quickly resynchronised with Bea, etc. Back in Dublin she again checked-out OK. Experiments showed she was all-right, anywhere on Earth, as long as she didn't go too high. There was no clear explanation.
"Guess we now know why Fen don't buy our product", remarked Arthur.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
Mid December 2009, Dublin.
No legs had been broken. Or other body parts. They had the two cached robots, from Australia. And it looked like a good name for the thieves would be 'Boskone'. They'd disappeared without a trace.
Arthur'd spoken to his science fiction friends, and 'Boskone' was apparently from the "Golden Age", the 'Doc' Smith "Lensman" books. Space opera bad guys, involved in all sort of criminality, but particularly drugs, and slaving. It figured that there'd be people who saw handwavium, and asked "How can this make me money, and I don't care who gets hurt".
Alice was delighted to be reunited with them; they were the closest thing she had to family. She'd decided on the surname 'Melbourne'. Alice worked with Jenny, to figure-out exactly what'd happened when she was waved. Jenny remarked she was learning engineering at an amazing rate, faster than she thought she herself'd have done. Motivation?
Looking back, it seemed almost inevitable. But, Jenny hadn't seen it coming, either. Alice had waved up 'Bea' and 'Chaz', three second-hand phones in each. What no one expected was that Alice'd find herself looking out through two new sets of eyes.
She'd deliberately put SIM cards in all the six phones, with their mutual phone numbers on, so they could all easily talk to each other. Instead, all three brains seemed to be 'running' her, and no amount of shut-downs, SIM card shuffling, and reboots seemed to fix this.
She'd even tried a Faraday cage test - they were all still in contact with each other. Jenny, returning from a consultancy trip 'up', sighed, and took Alice out to do clothes shopping for her two new bodies.
The thinking speed of an AI seemed to give Alice time to simulate three different persona, but she called two of them 'masks'. When she relaxed it was clear she was still one person in three bodies. She seemed to think she'd murdered her sisters, before they'd even been born.
Jenny wasn't happy about Alice's state of mind, so she suggested Arthur involve her in the new factory project. She seized on this distraction with all six hands, and was soaking up new skills at a remarkable rate. Jenny remarked it was social skills she herself'd been lacking when waved-up; Alice seemed to have started with these and was acquiring technical ones.
As sometimes seemed to be the case, the answer to the factory issue was 'all of the above'. New Body Builders were being built for long-term heavy-duty production use, and in the process scaled-up into something it took a crane to move around. Alice was really pleased to be the AI that made the factory run. Human staff would be employed, as well, to work with Alice on all parts of the production process, except the actual robot frame building.
Alice'd learned another trick. Apparently if she made a cable connection to a phone, then waved it up, it would run a distributed fragment of her mind. This didn't make her any smarter, but it certainly allowed her to split her attention far more ways. While these 'mind phones' could still make normal calls, her mental field didn't seem to be using RF to exchange thoughts, and worked at least over tens of miles. Later, they discovered, world-wide.
She'd been on a privacy and ethics course (or Bea had, anyway). Now she proposed that all factory staff get and carry a waved phone, at work, as part of their terms and conditions. And could use it for personal calls, too, at reduced call rates. She'd keep people's private affairs, private.
Arthur was dubious. Jenny remarked it would massively assist cooperation, safety, and probably help a lot with industrial espionage. Kevin Wright commented that group minds weren't covered by privacy legislation, though the rest of them thought that a bit disingenuous. Jenny said she'd been unsure, but she'd run it past Sarah, on her last visit, and she seemed to think it was a good idea. So it was settled.
Alice had found time to acquire a boyfriend. Or rather, the 'Chaz' part of her handled this. A rather shy sociology Masters student, who seemed fascinated by her, on a professional and romantic level. Kevin Wright suggested she not get 'distracted' while operating heavy machinery. Which caused some embarrassment, and, Jenny suggested to Arthur, private experimentation.
They'd had a bit of a shock. Jenny got permission to take Alice 'up' to see Kelly, who was fascinated with the prospect of meeting her. Alice and Kelly had chatted, on a secured line, quite a bit before the visit. Everything was OK until they got about 50 miles up. Alice shut-down.
Jenny regretted not having a better communication system as they continued on their flight plan to O'Neill Station. On arrival Kelly and Jenny checked Alice out, and could find nothing wrong. Messages from Dublin revealed Bea and Chaz were OK, as were all the mind phones, but they had suddenly lost Alice. Jenny didn't, quite, hurry her consultancy work. But, it was agreed the less urgent parts would be done either from Dublin or on a later trip.
At about 50 miles up on the return trip Alice suddenly revived. Initially she didn't know what'd happened, but quickly resynchronised with Bea, etc. Back in Dublin she again checked-out OK. Experiments showed she was all-right, anywhere on Earth, as long as she didn't go too high. There was no clear explanation.
"Guess we now know why Fen don't buy our product", remarked Arthur.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind