Adolescence: Book Two of Human Dilemma

By Scott Sibary

How do you generate your own identity, and how can you truly know when you’ve got it just right? Spanning the second half of this century, the story follows the life of half-Chinese, half-Norwegian Erling Deng, who from childhood is given free reign on figuring out how to develop himself and fit in. Erling becomes the only confidant of his cousin Torvald, who also seeks to find his private self and private meaning, but in a life already scripted for him.
Erling goes to work for the agency maintaining the artificial general intelligence for the global World Council, an enhanced version of the former United Nations. Meanwhile, Erling’s mother, Solveig, has held a special position, performing highly confidential work for that agency since its inception. The artificial general intelligence also faces its own, eventual rite of passage, and from their separate positions Erling and his mother play key roles in how that drama unfolds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Sibary
• Release date: May 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005754112

Scott Sibary

Scott Sibary is a native of California, and a citizen of both the US and Canada. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, and also spent one year at the University of Bergen, in Norway. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Scandinavian Languages and Literature, and then MBA and JD, he practiced law in the San Francisco Bay Area, and taught as an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley. He spent most of his career teaching business law at CSU, Chico. His extensive travel experiences, especially in countries economically less fortunate, have contributed to his humanist and internationalist perspectives.In addition to writing, he pursues outdoor activities like hiking, tennis, bird watching, and even the eternal ‘do list.’ "I find myself constantly balancing desire for the disciplined energy to “do”, with the need for equanimity: the sense that being is, in itself, wondrous."

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Adolescence

Book Two of Human Dilemma

by Scott Sibary

Copyright 2021 Scott Sibary

Smashwords Edition

ISBN-13: 9780463950500

Cover design by Christopher Moisan

Thank you downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

A minimum of 30% of the cost of this book (about half of the author royalties, varying with different retailers) will be donated to non-profit organizations that work to promote AI alignment with human values (such as those listed at the end of this book). The donee organization for Book One, Conception, has been The Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at UC Berkeley).

Disclaimer: The characters in this novel are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons is unintentional and coincidental. Nor is the unnamed queen mentioned in this story intended to resemble or be identified with any actual member of the Norwegian royal family.

PREFACE

The first draft of this book was written several years ago, before completing Book I, Conception. That book, finalized at the beginning of 2019, describes an influenza pandemic of the late 2020s, and subsequent efforts to conceive of more effective systems for international cooperation (and how the two viewpoint characters deal with that theme on an individual level). As we are currently seeing in 2021, we continue to face that challenge. It’s one thing to say what would be good to do or to achieve to overcome global threats like climate change, pandemics, or war. It’s another to design an effective system that will be both agreed and adhered to. The failure of international agreements, such as the Paris accord on climate change, to produce more than proclamations about what might be done in the future to ameliorate the buildup of greenhouse gases (and only later to possibly achieve actual remediation), tells us this conceptual challenge is not being met. Moreover, the increase in divisiveness within nations, and the repression of groups who give any resistance to the prevailing authority, worsens our situation. Mutations of avian flu, Ebola, or the like, could prove far more devastating than the current coronavirus pandemic (or even the one I described in Conception). We might hope our recent experiences will show us ways to cooperate to lessen the likelihood of such a future. But the indications, like the distribution of burdens and benefits from the COVID-19 pandemic, have been mixed.

Since that first draft of Adolescence, narrow AI has made impressive advances, while artificial general intelligence remains something popular with journalists as a future possibility, even eventuality. So far, there appears to be less in the way of a blueprint for its creation that there is for the also-momentous possibility of controlled fusion as a practical source of power generation (in my college years I read that fusion might be on line by the year 2000).

Yet slow technological progress is not necessarily bad, especially in this area. It gives us a greater opportunity to determine and articulate what we want the AGI systems to strive for, and how we want them to affect our lives. I won’t be around to witness how this revolution unfolds, but I would argue that AI and AGI have the potential to alter the ways we think, believe and exist to such an extent that this dilemma, and this process of deciding, might resemble a kind of adolescence for our species.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Interlude (2121)

Part I

Chapter One (2054)

Chapter Two (2054)

Chapter Three (2064–2065)

Chapter Four (2072)

Part 2

Chapter Five (2084)

Chapter Six (2084)

Chapter Seven (2084)

Chapter Eight (2085)

Chapter Nine (2085)

Chapter Ten (2085–2086)

Chapter Eleven (2087)

Chapter Twelve (2087)

Chapter Thirteen (2087)

Part 3

Chapter Fourteen (2087)

Chapter Fifteen (2094)

Chapter Sixteen (2095)

Chapter Seventeen (2096)

Chapter Eighteen (2097)

Chapter Nineteen (2101)

Chapter Twenty (2101)

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Relevant Organizations

INTERLUDE

(2121)

WAVES OF DESPERATION echo in her mind. Sink away, seek shelter in the forest, drop into the brush. Here is refuge, beside his tombstone. Embrace it quickly. It may yet be warm.

It’s not your fault. She breaks into a sweat and hears it again. It’s not your fault.

Then whose? she asks, and in reply, a weaving of vines grows rapidly over her head: the torment revived.

Fallen asleep while wrapped too tightly in thick winter duvet, she turns, restless. Her arms writhe in their confinement and fend off her protection.

Budding awareness rescues her, washing away the twilight of sleep. Her palms rise towards rapidly fading treetops, pushing away vestiges of another world. But the earlier dream, the long one, the one she awoke from hours earlier and recounted to herself in a wakened haze, remains as another memory of her treasured pain.

Bedding flung aside, her feet sliding downward over the edge, she lifts her dazed head from the embracing pillow to the elevated status of Conscious Perceiver. A blurry view of closed curtains gradually sharpens like her thoughts. She takes hesitant steps towards the window, bare feet treading gingerly on a carpet as soft as newly germinated blades of grass. The cool air rinses heat from her skin, invigorating her mind.

Cautiously drawing back a fold of drapes to peer out the hotel room window, she sees from the dim lights of the building that it is still snowing. She faces the blizzard and her tension returns.

Chamberlain! Have a pot of tea brought in, she says without turning her head from the aggravating view. The figure appears momentarily, nods, and disappears again.

She heads for the steam shower. Directed mists form a cleansing fog. She gives a sardonic laugh. Her understanding of her present situation is as obscure to her as the air in the shower. Her unusual mood is not rinsing away.

Stepping out, facing the mirror, she confronts the one looking at her: dull blonde hair, nearly straight to the shoulders, face not round nor long, lips not thin but no longer so full, even and fit in figure. It all could give rise to an accusation of ordinariness if she let herself slide into hypocrisy.

The image seems to demand the question.

Freja Thea Héloïse, you find yourself in Svalbard again. Now what?

Older by twenty years. Question dodged.

No less lucky for that. Admit it and move on. Lucky in health, in brains, usually in humor, most say in looks, definitely in status, and yes, even in family. Why do you dwell in grief long past its due course?

I can’t help my dreams.

Honestly? Look at yourself, lost in thoughts of three years ago, six years ago, twenty years ago—as if by now you hadn’t grown up.

It wasn’t my choice to be here again!

She turns her back on the interrogator, tightens the belt on her bathrobe, and walks away from another episode.

In the sitting room she sees a tea service laid out on the round table. She takes a seat facing the now uncovered windows, lifts the cozy off the porcelain teapot, and pours herself a cup of the reddish-brown infusion. She ignores the accompanying assortment of sweet biscuits and dried fruits. Preoccupied, recounting, she uncovers no answers. Taking sips of tea, her left leg crossed over her right, an elbow on the table, she drops her chin into her palm and ponders the storm outside and in.

Criticisms roll through her mind. What a ludicrous time of year to be holding an international ceremony at the Global Seed Vault. It’s early February, cloudy, and pitch-black outside. The meager street and building lights do more to highlight the dark isolation of the place than to lighten spirits.

She knows this far north the winter cold is often so hard that the surface of the ice does not melt underfoot to become slippery. It’s an endearment to those living here, seduced by slim offerings. Nice, fine, crisp, cold air, they like to say. Not now, not with blowing snow.

With clear skies, the northern lights might have given one of their spectacular displays and offered an impressive greeting to the members of the Terran Botanical Society. Could that be the reason behind the delayed choice of venue? Even as mere honorary president, she told them she didn’t think it worthwhile transporting people to this cold, dark place when so many warm, verdant spots on Earth offered themselves. But the enormous symbolism of the Global Seed Vault made it like a pilgrimage for the Society’s members. Or so she was told.

And indeed, the reputation of the Vault had grown with the role it played in retaining viable plant species, especially for crops that were needed during decades of climatic devastation. Tomorrow she should present the Woven Flower, an award to a person working in a botanically related field, for extraordinary accomplishment in furthering the preservation of species of plants or rare habitat.

She sits up straight, as if preparing the presentation, and reflects. One hundred years ago, clear skies were common enough in winter in the arctic desert ocean. But twenty-second-century patterns were looking different. Warmer temperatures most places, yet in the Arctic, more snow. And the forecast today is for a deluge.

She wonders whether the flights from the mainland will be cancelled, and why the meeting wasn’t scheduled for summer, when Svalbard could be a gloriously bright place. Or, wouldn’t anyone rather receive the prize in Kakadu, Tahiti, or Hawaii? What about the other members, many of whom may have chosen not to attend this trial-by-ice?

And then there was this mysterious arrangement that she arrive a day early to visit the Global Seed Vault and familiarize herself with its layout and research facilities. She knows the complex has been substantially expanded since her first visit, when she was turning thirteen. Yet she could have prepared by means of a virtual tour using a holographic interface in Oslo.

She nearly shouts her thoughts aloud. Isn’t this one time when I’m damn well versed in the subject for a so-called society figure?

The Society knows she has degrees in botany and anthropology. They even have on open file a copy of her doctoral dissertation in ethnobotany: Seeds for New Expression: Development and Cultivation of New Varietals for Artistic Purposes in Neolithic and Bronze Age Societies. Examples from Norden and Andean South America. The concepts may not have been completely new, but she contended her approach was. Yet, methodical was the only compliment offered. Not the greatest praise one could give to work that, above all, should add new insight. Wasn’t it a sign of passion, and enthusiasm, to suffer the routine tedium of arranging belabored experiments and deciphering copious data? Did not Mendel and Burbank show that centuries ago? Or, underneath, do they dismiss her work as a privileged girl’s idle pastime and a topic better left to artificial intelligence?

She drains her cup and walks with pensive steps into the bedroom.

It is the time you wished to prepare for the tour. The soft-spoken figure appearing in the doorway behind her glows with a gentle smile and waits.

Thank you, Chamberlain. It’s the time you had suggested to me, she replies. Her questions about the conference have shunted her mood from irritation to resignation, and now to near indifference.

Chamberlain is dressed from a bygone era in black-and-white butler’s uniform with bow tie and rear coat tails down to his calves. His rectangular face suggests authority, except for the lifting of his eyebrows—as if to communicate his patience. This specter of a distinguished gentleman allows her a sense of home and companionship, soothing for the moment. Walking by the elderly, well-proportioned figure, she throws her robe on the bed. She holds out towards him a possible outfit for the day. The clothing style she chooses is suggestive of an academic: the artisan tweed jacket over a simple cotton blouse and felt skirt avoids any emphasis on sexuality. He nods, and she proceeds to dress without the intrusion of an attendant.

Back in the sitting room, she pours herself more tea. The darkening liquid flows like her thoughts. The time it takes to fill the cup is all that she gives herself to decide whether she should question him. She has noticed that his facial features have become just a little more detailed, making him seem more refined and real. But she has gleaned nothing unusual from Chamberlain. Nor has she detected any possible inconsistencies in his behavior. His generally identical physical appearance doesn’t keep her from recognizing that he is far more intelligent and wise than the Chamberlain she knew as a child. He has become reliably adept at giving her exactly the information she needs without her having to inquire.

Thank you, she says with a nod, and Chamberlain vanishes.

She’s left with only the swirling tea inside the cup, held in a hand searching to embrace something warm. Alone she sits in a room in the dark in a storm in the Arctic in February. And only alone can she reflect on the inner unknowns and perform any needed penance for her role in what has passed.

She stands. Looking down into the liquid, she takes a few slow, sliding steps on the carpet, as though absentmindedly practicing the steps to one of the dances her father could do so well.

Does this mood have to do with his appearance in my dreams? Or was it that other unsettling dream?

Pausing near the window, she revisits her decision.

If there’s more behind the day’s arrangements than mere accident or incompetence, then it is too important to ignore. You do have responsibility, and he’s the only one who might provide the answers.

Arghh! she lets out in an unfamiliar bellow and resumes her pacing. What if he’s not forthcoming?

Shuddering with a wave of nausea, she spins on her heels, eyes searching the room. No one, nothing, except atop the dresser a hand-sized object with one tiny light.

Chamberlain!

At your service. The life-size image of the butler glows again before her. As he steps forward, the beam for his projection passes through the steam from the teapot, causing the image to flicker.

She shudders again, puts down her teacup, and steels herself. Is the transport ready?

It will be at your disposal within one or two minutes from your request. If you would prefer, you could proceed to the lobby now.

First I’d like a little more information on the purpose of today’s visit. Is there more you could tell me? She wonders at her diplomatic phrasing.

Of course. What would you like to know?

Could there be another reason than simply familiarizing myself with the facilities for the sake of scientists who might not be arriving today?

Of course. There is your involvement in the field of botany. The facilities have been greatly augmented since your visit twenty years ago and might prove fascinating. Today gives you an undisturbed opportunity to avail yourself of these. And, he pauses for emphasis, until your social engagements this evening, there is not much else to do.

She stares at the snowflake-speckled blackness outside as she mutters under her breath, Oh, I’m sure some of the locals wouldn’t mind if I showed up at noon so we could start partying then. It’s dark enough. Her voice firms. What else?

I’m not sure.

Nor I of you.

I beg your pardon?

In the past, on even the most sensitive or painful subjects, you have shown excellent discretion. What you’ve withheld, I’ve been glad for afterwards. And in such instances, you always volunteered that you could not properly say more, alerting me to the possibility of further questioning.

Yes, ma’am.

Now tell me, whose idea was it for me to make today’s visit?

I don’t really know.

You mean, it might not have come from any governmental office?

Correct. I’m not usually given what I would consider full information, perhaps because they know that my first duty is to you.

Could you ever follow government orders against mine?

Please consider it an indication of my complete loyalty when I say that I am not sure, rather than giving you a simple, categorical ‘no.’ I do not have a full understanding of myself, you see. I used to think I did, but that was a shallow perspective.

Again under her breath, she crisply articulates, Oh, conflicted artificial intelligence, that’s what we’ve come up with. She sighs. I appreciate that. It makes you seem all the more human. She’s stumped, playing attorney deposing a hologram. Yet she continues. I understand your reluctance to follow our human habit of jumping to conclusions, or even to suggest possibilities you calculate as less than probable. But have you any conjectures which you think in your ever-wise judgment might be useful to me?

The idea might not have originated from the government, nor been proposed by the Terran Botanical Society.

So you have suggested.

Over the years I have become much more sophisticated in my analyses, and I often perceive the possibility that some things are put into play from sources or influences behind those visibly acting, who are themselves unaware of being influenced.

So you’re recognizing manipulative behavior.

I could suspect such a scenario today. Only, at this moment, I don’t have any clues to tell you about the origin of the idea. He adds after a polite pause, Since I have determined as best I can that there are no unusual risks, perhaps we may find our answers over the course of the next few hours? It is but one day.

She abandons the line of inquiry and returns her focus to her first visit—the visit she’d always thought of as her father’s idea. She initially understood it as a journey intended as a birthday present and to nurture her interest in botany. And perhaps to give her a kick in the pants as well. But she has always suspected, half-hidden in her subconscious, that there was more to it. She opens that box to peer in.

Competing fireworks of ideas explode and she grits her teeth. Was Chamberlain still protecting her late father? But that should not work against her. Or could Chamberlain be manipulated even now, despite his awareness of the possibility?

She stares at Chamberlain and sees in his glowing half-presence a potential. He could not solve this alone, nor could she.

My earlier visit, when my father brought me here—was that his idea? Did it originate with him?

I am not certain. I think not. Nor did it appear to come from your mother.

Nor my grandmother?

No.

Who could you mention as most likely?

I would suggest that your father brought you here at the behest of Mr. Erling Deng.

She takes a measured step backwards to an upholstered armchair, and lets her body drop onto its spring-cushioned seat. The conclusion settles like the dampened motion of her body in the chair. No wonder she had those dreams. Buried facts will burst forth like germinating seeds into one’s attention once the missing elements are supplied. Erling Deng, once touted by some to be the most influential person on Earth—perhaps in Earth’s history—had sent her father to Svalbard, with her in tow, for a reason. It must have been a specific and very important reason. One that might not yet have reached its fruition.

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

(2054)

JUST WHO ARE you, anyway? it demanded, that reflection in the full-length foyer mirror.

Staring straight back at the portrait framed in fake gold gilding, he replied with a fully inflated chest. He held the pompous pose even as he felt the pretension fading from within, like his childhood innocence.

He raised one shoulder, then lowered it while elevating the other. His dark-green pullover shirt, currently a fad, just didn’t produce anything special. And his black jeans with side pockets on the thighs did even less. Putting his weight on his left foot, he let his left hip stick out. Then he tried the other side. Dissatisfied, he tilted and rotated his head.

He thought of blaming the mirror. Its cliché border of plastic grape vines struck him as an attempt to mass-produce the effect of a hand-carved frame surrounding a work of art. Instead, it denigrated his portrayal to an equivocal status. An unpretentious purchase by his thrifty parents, it reminded him of his self-image every time he stepped out into the world.

He confirmed his two neatly stuffed bags stood by the front door at a measured distance from his mother’s valise and luggage, then returned his attention to the image. He sent the fingers of his left hand combing through the dark-brown bangs hanging over his forehead, pushing the indifferent strands back and restoring an orderly appearance.

Neat, he thought. Fourteen years old and already 170 centimeters tall. Yes neat, not clumsy. Not too clumsy, he told himself despite last week’s teasing in the school gym after he had tripped over his eagerly growing feet. Not handsome either, he admitted to the reflection. But not homely. Not too homely.

He straightened his posture, tugged down once on the front of his shirt, and produced a smile to persuade the wide, brown, uncertain eyes gazing back at him.

Then he took one step towards the mirror, extended his right arm and announced, Deng Erling. Veldig hyggjeleg å treffe Dem! He gave a formal nod.

That sounded good, he heard from around the corner. Just remember that you say your given name first, and your family name second.

He performed again to the mirror. Erling Deng. Veldig hyggjeleg å treffe Dem. But please speak to me in English because I don’t speak much Norwegian.

You might be surprised. You understood me fine when you were little, and I still spoke to you in my dialect. Now, are you finally ready to go?

He heard her deliberate steps as she continued her check around the apartment, pacing the narrow hallway, likely pausing at the doorway to each rectangular cell and interrogating it for what it might be holding back: luggage, electronics, keys, food. His father would not be joining them, deterred by the expense and by his work. For his mother, postponing had worked until it was too late. Now she said there were messes to clean up.

But he had his own mess to clean up—himself, and it wasn’t coming together. This meeting he was hoping for, it had better be a success. It would prove he could fit in somewhere, belong, and still be himself, whatever that was. If he failed, well, he’d rather not contemplate that. It would feel better never to have been born.

His mother entered the foyer, stood behind him, and sighed aloud.

Yes! he