Born of Silicon

Book 5 Chapter 51

The caravan reaches the tower before we do, or at least everyone except me. A few of my bodies are already waiting when the caravan pulls into the parking garage, and the AI willing to help are slowly trickling through the elevator.

The caravan parks, and people begin to file out once again. Many of them are confused at the small army of Blues standing in front of them.

“Hi everyone! I'm in all of these bodies.” I raise one hand on each body. “I'm sure you all have questions, please, come up to any of me and I will help. For now though, here’s the plan. My friends and I, some of the AI who live here, are here to help unload the caravan. After that, we'll help you bring everyone upstairs so you can see your new home. Once you're all settled, you're free to do whatever you want. Relax and recover, explore the city, anything. I'll keep a few bodies nearby if you need anything at all, or if you have questions.”

They certainly do have endless questions, and I have just as many answers. At least I'm efficient at questions and answers, it hardly taxes my mind anymore. It lets me dedicate most of my attention to the most important person asking questions.

“What do you mean you're in all of them?” Daisy asks.

“I'm an AI, remember? That means I can connect to anything with a wireless connection and control it. Right now, I'm just controlling all of these bodies.”

“That's so cool!” Her excitement is infectious. “Can I do that?”

“Maybe in the future! It's possible to let a human brain interface with electronics the same way I do, but it’d be dangerous to operate on your brain right now. It really needs to develop more.”

“Oh, ok.” Her heart breaking almost makes me reconsider.

“But I can teach you a lot before then! Programming, robotics, whatever you’re interested in.”

“Really?” Her disappointment vanishes beneath newfound excitement.

“Yeah! Whenever you want!”

“Now?” 

“We can as soon as you get settled, alright?”

“Ok!”

Work goes quickly with everyone helping. It’s so nice to see the humans so comfortable around the AI. When AI are outside the tower, anyone who lived through the war has the same reaction. There’s always a worried and nervous air around them, even from the humans who are used to seeing them. It’s getting better, but it’s a slow process. These people don’t have any of that fear.

As soon as the cars are empty of these people’s few possessions, the leader of the caravan approaches one of my bodies.

“So, we done here?” He asks.

“Yeah, thank you so much for your help. You can get out the same way you got in.”

“You looking to keep these tunnels a secret?”

“Oh, no, I don’t mind people knowing.” I reassure him. “You don’t have to worry about accidentally revealing a secret or something.”

“Uh-huh.” He’s surprisingly disappointed by that? He gets back in the caravan without another word, and with a wave of his hand out the window the caravan turns around and heads back out towards the open desert.

People are starting to head upstairs as Cassie, Ivy, Vince, and my original body finally reach the parking lot. It’s a slow process getting everyone up into the tower. I really should consider asking Monary how feasible installing a few more elevators would be. The inside of the tower is pretty dense, maybe it would be best as an addition outside the tower?

“Cassie!” Daisy yells and runs over, followed closely behind by Sapphire. “Blue said she'd teach me! Now I can learn from you and her!”

“Oh yeah? You better work as hard with her as you did with me then.”

“I will!” She promises.

“Good. You’ve been keeping up maintenance on your knife, right?”

“Yeah!”

“Can I see it?” Cassie reaches out her hand, and Daisy happily hands over the knife in its sheath. While Cassie inspects it, I take the moment to ask a question of my own.

“Hey, you’re the only kid here, right?” I ask.

“Yeah?” She shrinks back a little, afraid she must have done something wrong.

“I don’t actually live here very often, not with my main body, and Cassie is here even less. There’s a little compound called Silver’s that we stay at, along with a ton of kids that they’ve taken in over the years. How would you like to go there every day? You could hang out with kids your age after we teach you.” I glance momentarily up at Sapphire to get her approval. She doesn’t react, maybe she’s just friends with Daisy and not a parental figure?

“That sounds great!” Daisy rebounds with even more excitement.

“Alright, I’ll introduce you to everyone tomorrow then! For now though, how about we go pick out a room. Any requests?”

“Am I allowed to ask for things?” She asks.

“Of course!”

“I want to be next to Sapphire.” She says quietly.

I glance up at Sapphire before responding, and she gives a nod back.

“Sure, that’s easy! Let’s get your stuff and go, alright?”

“Ok!”

Collecting Daisy’s belongings from the small pile doesn’t take long. She doesn’t have much besides the clothes on her back and what she’s already carrying. That’s fine though, it’s an easy fix. Everyone will get a stipend to buy what they need, whether that’s clothes or furniture.

All that’s left to do is to wait for our turn on the elevator. Cassie makes use of that time to refresh a lot of what she already taught Daisy, and I get to just watch her teach. I love nothing more than just watching her work, her entire focus turned to this one task. She’s just so cute.

Ivy and Vince head off to help in their own ways, Vince helping to move and organize belongings, and Ivy helping to reassure a lot of the humans.

Eventually our turn comes, and the four of us step inside.

“How does this work?” Daisy asks.

“It’s an elevator. You hit a button to decide which floor you want to go to, and it takes you there. You’re all going to be living on floors 11 and 12, just above where the AI live. Do you know if anyone can’t read?”

Daisy just shrugs. I don’t know why I expected her to just know. Regardless, I should put something in place just in case. I shoot off a message to S-21 requesting them to create a small plaque with a picture of what’s on each floor, and receive a small, affirmative hum in response.

The elevator opens into a newly created hallway. Renovating this floor to allow humans to live here instead of just AI was an undertaking, but a valuable one. I’m just glad we finished it so early. 

“So, the outer rim of the floor are rooms. If you follow the hallway in either direction, you’ll end up in a public living area. It’s just an open area for the villagers to hang out in, as well as a communal kitchen. There we installed stairs, so if you want to get to the other living floors you can easily. And every room has everything you need!”

I check with the layout that Monary has been creating before opening up a room. I'd hate to accidentally walk into a room someone has already claimed.

I throw open the door dramatically and let them both see the inside. It's a simple place, but that's fine. An open apartment with a sizable bed, a desk, and a small private cooking area. A single door leads into a private bathroom. 

Daisy rushes in, heading directly for the bed. She jumps on and spreads out.

“Sapphire look!” She laughs.

Sapphire steps in wordlessly, scanning every feature of the room.

“Is every room like this?” She asks.

“Yeah, they’re all identical. We have a manufacturing plant, once it’s free we can help you customize them.”

Sapphire just shakes her head in astonishment.

“Thank you.” She adds after a few seconds. “We’ll find some way to repay you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Take as long as you need. I have more than I could ever use, and at least with you I’m putting it to good use.”

“Can we start learning now?” Daisy interrupts.

“Sure! Do you want to learn from me or Cassie?”

I’ve never seen anyone more conflicted. I can't just leave her so torn, I need to give her a solution.

“How about this? I need to get a computer set up in here before I can teach you anything. Why don't you keep catching up with Cassie, and I can teach you soon?”

“Ok!”

Cassie doesn’t hesitate to get to work once again, and I do the same. Daisy just needs a wireless terminal, not a fully fledged computer. She can use a portion of my processing power, I definitely have more than I need. I set out to grab a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and a few wires to hook everything into the wider network. In addition, I make a request.

“Monary, I have an interesting request for you. Can you create some kind of visual programming language, something a kid could use to learn the basics?”

“I do have experience creating languages, but only ones entirely impractical and nearly impossible to parse. Give me a moment.” Their processors ramp up, and I even give them some of my personal ones to speed up their project.

It takes a few minutes, but eventually their processors return to idle, although the cooling systems still have catching up to do. They hand me a compiled file, which I store on an empty hard drive.

“I hope it helps.” Monary says before returning to their tasks.

I spend a moment familiarizing myself with it, and I think it’s exactly what she needs. Premade code blocks can be wired in together without worry of formatting or syntax. In addition, she can also peek inside each of those code blocks to learn what they’re doing and why, all carefully explained by Monary.

“It’s perfect, thank you.”

I’m intentionally slow while bringing the parts to Daisy’s room, buying time to just listen to Cassie. Unfortunately, no matter how slowly I walk, I’m forced to interrupt her. Daisy’s eyes go wide with wonder as I bring in her new setup.

“Sorry, I think it’s my turn.” I say to Cassie, and begin my instruction as I set things up. “Programming is easy, at least probably. I’m kind of cheating, just knowing all of this naturally. Anyway, the basics of programming is that the computer will do exactly what you tell it to, nothing more and nothing less. My friend made you your own simplified programming language we can mess around with. So! Let’s start by just displaying a simple message:  ‘Hello, World!’”