Artificial Intelligence

By Cat Webling

The USS Alpine One is in orbit around planet Earth. It is set for a one-year mission to research the plausibility of life outside of our atmosphere. Its crew is small:
Rose and Matt are on the ground, overseeing patterns and reports, interfacing with their higher-ups, and keeping the in-flight crew connected to home.
Roger is a top-of-the-field programmer and software engineer. Celine is the best pilot NASA could find, and adores the stars she finds herself sailing through.

And then there's Roger's pet project. He calls it the Jungian Artificial Central Kinesthetics Monitoring System, lovingly nicknamed Jack. Jack is a learning program, the most complicated artificial intelligence ever created, and the most convincing, which leaves them all wondering...

Where does artificial intelligence end, and consciousness begin?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cat Webling
• Release date: Oct 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393480105

Cat Webling

Cat Webling is an actress and author based in Kansas. She started writing professionally in 2018 when she published her first novel, Artificial Intelligence. Since then, she has released several poetry collections, two short story collections, and a wide variety of articles and blog posts on her website. She continues to write from her home, which she shares with her loving partner, adorable son, a very small lion, and a one-eyed wonder cat.

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This book is dedicated to all those who dare to question what it means to be human.

Special thanks to my beautiful Beta readers for all their help, to my wonderful boyfriend who continues to inspire me, TO MY BEST FRIENDS FOR THEIR CONSTANT SUPPORT, and to my amazing mother, who was the first person to read this book, the first to cheer me on in its writing and editing, the most excited to see it published, and who means more to me than I can ever tell her.

Prologue: Asimov’s Laws

He was well aware that he should be asleep. The coffee on his desk had gone cold a long time ago. The blue-washed dregs in the bottom of a Nerds Do It Better mug were now doing less to keep him awake and more to make the room smell a bit less like he’d been cramped in it for far too long already. It was lucky that small spaces had never bothered him, or he’d have gone insane. Then again, he couldn’t afford to have small spaces bother him, could he?

They were launching in one week’s time, had been testing and revising and testing again for three months, and final systems tests would be conducted first thing in the morning. But he had just wanted to tweak one more thing, and after that, he’d had to tweak one more thing, and after that...

He frowned at the line of code in front of him. LAYER TEN, the final layer of the neural network he’d been working on solidly for about six months now. The rest of it was fully functional, ready to go, and, sure, without this one line, this one layer, the program would work flawlessly. But he just wasn’t satisfied.

He’d graduated top of his class, the best programmer that anyone had seen at MIT for many, many years. NASA had signed him before he’d ever walked across the stage in his cap and gown. It was no wonder to anyone that he’d be in charge of developing the program that would keep them alive out there, and no one had questioned him about how long it’d taken (six months was remarkably fast), or what he’d actually been doing. To be fair, he wasn’t certain any of them would understand it.

Nine layers of tightly interwoven coding, one more than the most advanced system to date, that would allow it to control nearly every mundane function, from room temperature to air supply to medical check-ups and more. They would not need to send any health reports back to earth manually, it would do that too. Anything and everything that could be done automatically, would be. On top of all of that, it’d be able to speak to them, and learn from their responses exactly what it could do to make them more comfortable, and to keep them in peak physical condition.

But that wasn’t enough for him. For him, everything came down to this line...this one little line, this extra layer. This was what would make or break it for him. This was what set aside his program from anyone else’s. Sure, it wasn’t technically legal, but he’d have to live with the results himself, wouldn’t he? All else failed, he could reset and remove the layer without affecting functionality in the slightest.

It was that thought that finally steeled him to his decision. He implemented the line, and saved his work, then ran the program. The familiar voice rang out over the ship’s speakers, but this time, there was something underneath it that hadn’t been there before. He smiled, pleased as he turned it off again. Not quite perfect, not quite finished. He’d have to fiddle with it in-flight...but it was a start.

He certainly couldn’t keep calling it it much longer.

Chapter One: He Learns.

But it’s space, Matt whined, grinning widely as he leaned back in his swivel chair. Rose rolled her eyes at the camera that Matt was sitting in front of. The roll turned into a disapproving glare.

"M att, we all think space is pretty great, that’s why we’re on this team in the first place. It’s why we work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It’s literally in our job description to love space." She leaned over and ruffled his scarlet hair, much to his annoyance, but it didn’t seem to alter the style of the mop in any way. Matt’s hair was always a mess, she told him constantly, and for God’s sake, why didn’t he get a haircut? She’s one to talk, Matt would reply, gesturing at the hair that fell well past the small of her back, and she would lose that argument for the day. She ducked as he reached over to ruffle her hair in return, shooting another fake glare at her as he did so, but she didn’t quite manage to escape the quick side-hug that followed. Not that she was trying particularly hard to avoid him.

Oh, get a room, you two, I don’t need to see all this, laughed a voice from the speakers beside the monitor, and Celine shook her head in mock disapproval. I swear they don’t pay me enough for the shit I put up with.

Ah, shut up, Cel, Matt chuckled, returning to his original