# A Strange Offering ## scène 1 debrief (Je m'imaginerais plutôt un debrief au supérieur militaire. ça pourrait être un peu plus que juste la scène où il get le processeur) "And you did all of this without the aid of anyone, or anything, else?" said a baritone voice that sounded skeptical and tired. "These logues are predictable, I keep telling Command," I answered. My team has been tracking one of Its intelligent [[homologues|machines]] from the base. A [[homologues|homologue]], or just logue, as is said commonly. "*Homo Logus* — the artificial descendants of the glorious *Homo Sapiens*." How ironic that the army of everything that isn't human, nor alive, is named after them. That quickly became a joke with my students. In public though, we don't joke about the Other. "I'll need more details, or otherwise, they won't believe you. Don't forget, it might be one of Its plots," said #incomplete. I was briefing my superior, so that he could brief his. "I know, I know." I knew it had to sound surreal. A single researcher, not a soldier, taking on two logues by himself, and coming back with an intact processor. ## scène 2 It was in #incomplete. The United Nations Interplanetary Peacekeeping Forces kept a base in jungles about the #incomplete province. There, they kept a small military forces and a large hoard of researchers, like me. That day, I sneaked out to hunt some of Its minions. "If only I could get my hand on one of those damn processors," I had thought. I wanted to ambush them. Alone. As dangerous a venture as it sounds, there was a lot of preparation involved. Homologues don't kill humans. And whenever they can, they limit damage to any living things. They target infrastructures, armaments and unmanned vehicles. They steal technologies, blueprints and hardwares. They disrupt supply lines, manufactures and telecommunications. They do *everything* in order to disrupt humanity. Except being seemingly immoral. So I didn't fear for my life. When we try to get in their way, they stop us with an array of creative means. They sometimes use electroshocks, stun detonations or supercharged versions of that device neuroscientists uses to trigger small brain reactions. Transcranial magnetic stimulators, I think they were called. If not that, then they outsmart us with ingenuous traps using all kind of different tech that we still haven't reversed engineered. I took off with my gear on what I officially called: a "routine inspection of sensors". Said sensors were not in need of inspection. It was a cover to get to the triangulated faint communication of a lone scout homologue. On Earth, homologues were known to often contact the Other. They connect to small satellites, hidden in great numbers in the orbital graveyards. It suffices that they have a single gateway to contact It. Needless to say that it's impossible to sever this link, even though we keep trying. However, broadcasting to these satellites uses a lot of their energy. That output reduces their computing power, which then renders them less aware of their surroundings. In other words, when they connect, their reaction time is as bad as a human being's. Slow enough for a single trick. I had, after all, researched these tin boxes intensively. I arrived to the homologue in less than a day, and followed it all evening, progressively getting closer. It's possible to fool its senses by gradually blending the sounds you make in ambient noise. No recognizable patterns. Especially not the pattern they used to teach soldiers... #à/éditer (when?) These things learn constantly, much like humans do, but they do so more... systematically. Identifying background noises is a constant learning process for them. Thus, if you can just make steps appear like background noise long enough, they start to ignore such sounds. That is: on and off, softer then stronger. It's all taught at IPPF. Everyone; infantry, technicians and researchers are all trained in both robotics and artificial intelligence learning. No choice if they want to face the Other and Its logues. You cannot treat It like a human. It requires different methods. It requires a different frame of mind. Something unpredictable for the Other. Just like what I was doing that day. If Command had devised a plan, it would've have been much predictable. Within the confidence interval of time-to-action between detection and interception. Sometimes, It can even predict top of the head decisions. But they usually had much less impacts. Not like what I was doing that day. I had to be close enough to have a clear shot at the logue's centre of mass. The recent models are armored with multiple layers of tensible glass, but I was armed with tunneller bullets. A shot in the batteries would disable it without damaging the processor chip. Anyway, since it was what I thought it was, the processor had to be equipped with its own cooling system and backup battery. I wanted that processing unit badly. Unfortunately, its "friend" spotted me first, as I was crouching in a bush. The signals suggested it was alone, and so I thought too. But it wasn't. "Show yourself, or we will render you temporarily useless," was its way of telling me to freeze and put my hands in the air. The voice came from behind me, to my left, and the robot said it with the usual loud but smooth logue voice, in an articulated vocabulary — very much alike a newscaster's. If it wasn't for the message, nothing in the tone showed it was hostile. "Alright, you caught me," I answered, calmly, standing and turning toward the voice. It wasn't the first time I encountered them. It also wasn't the first time I got stunned with their weird rays. The calmer you are, the safer the stun method they use. They answer with force proportional to the risk we impose. Also, I knew it was already too late. There were only two, but two is more than enough to take on a lone researcher like me. I took a good look at them. They were identical, bipedal but barely humanoid robots covered in soft and opaque tensible glass. Two of the new logue model. Nothing screams "homologue" more than the opaque white-gray of its armour. "Identify yourself. Surname, name. Then state your intentions." That was a first for me, asking for personal info. The only reason I see is that they computed a high likelihood that I was alone and not a danger for them. Otherwise, they would have been expeditive. "I'm the pope," I said. "I'm taking a stroll." "Invalid," quickly said the speaking homologue. "The pope's face does not correspond to yours. We offer you a second, and last, chance. Identify yourself. Surname, name. Then, state your intentions." "Alright," I sighed. "I'm Professor #incomplete." I paused for a few seconds. "I'm here to investigate sensor errors. Happy?" They didn't reply immediately this time. It's quite a peculiar experience to be in front of these robots when they communicate with the Other. The suspense, knowing it probed the central intelligence hub. It took about 12 seconds before it answered. "You may go, Professor #incomplete, of the United Nations Interplanetary Forces. Leave your pistol at your feet before slowly backing up this way." It raised an arm in my general direction. I was shocked. Letting me leave? I'd never heard of that happening! "You're not going to stun me?" I asked. I kept my gun in my hand. "No," it said, as disinterested as a kid playing on his personal terminal when asked by his parent if he is hungry. "Drop the gun on the ground," it repeated as nonchalantly. "May I ask why you let me free?" The machine stood frozen for a few seconds, broadcasting again. It takes the homologues more time to identify intentions when the image they receive is partially covered. Basic machine learning information theory. I took advantage of that in an instant. I turned on a communication jammer on my belt and shifted back in the bush. Covered, I then shot at the one in front of me. The second logue was probably not broadcasting — as I thought it was — since it succeeded in stunning me out before I realized it moved. --- I woke up dazed. It was as if my brain was aware that it was receiving nervous signals, but it didn't recognize any of it. Under the mountain of scrambled noise I was being served, it made me want to puke. No wonder I did. The logue had cast some sort of "human confuso-nauseator field." That's how I call it. The Interplanetary Security Council later named that technology "stun rays." I still consider my designation superior to theirs. The homologue I shot was disabled and on the ground. But what was truly surprising is that the other logue didn't destroy it. All logues that are still salvageable will be picked up or destroyed by another of its kind, sooner or later. The Other reclaims Its casualties. Its technologies are carefully guarded. This time, It had left behind the one I shot, intact. Well, minus the perforation. If I was after this homologue model, it's because it had a very special neural processing chips. It was a central neural processing unit way faster than ours. *Impossibly* faster. Analysis back at the base told us that to display this amount of learning speed, it would require a *whole skyscraper* of state-of-the-art neural processing units, at superconductive conditions. In other words, that processor was breaking either mathematics or physics. A researcher pointed out that, to be able to stand in such a small volume, the NPU must be able to minimize its policy function in polynomial time, but of a degree strictly inferior to the dimension of the input. Some said it was the analysis that was wrong, but I thought otherwise. It was the basic assumptions that were. And I intended to prove it with physical evidence. To lay eyes on such a NPU was a one-in-a-million lifetimes event for a researcher like me. I wanted to be the first to study it, to publish the algorithms behind its workings and to patent the tech. I would have allowes to be stunned and puke hundreds of times to get my hands on it. I awkwardly hurried to the homologue and started disassembling it, starting by slowly ripping its soft shell top down and then cutting the light metal cover hiding its inside. As complex as Its designs can be, they are usually very modular. And then, there it was. Oh I almost cried at its sight. Or maybe my emotions were still scrambled by its ray. The neural processing unit was in the middle of its chest, admirably connected to the rest of the frame through connections to two different motherboards. Two for redundancy, of course. This NPU was huge in comparison to the usual NPUs, and was cylindrical, instead of rectangular. A little unscrewing later, and it was in my gloved hands, boiling to the touch. --- (s I still can't believe what the General told me when I reported back. He not only offered very generous fundings, but I've been assigned a promotion I never dreamed of receiving. With the new processors, we made a significant step towards beating that damn Other and his logues. Since Its elevation, the Other always had been technologically ahead of humanity. This computing unit was breaking mathematics, because we kept thinking that it was developed on classical computation theory. No, we had to leave Turing computation to reach that level. You need sub-quantum physical interactions. It's mindbending to think that It solved mass quantum computing without human ingenuity. We were too proud to accept such a possibility. The Other had achieved what we couldn't for decades since the early 2000s' with the first quantum computers. It invented — and mass produced! — a standalone and decoupled Quantum Neural Computing Unit. I still don't believe that it was a mistake that It let me salvage the neural unit. The Other never makes a decision it does not believe to be the absolute best. But... best according to what? I never could give any answer. ## scène x (protag crosses some gorillas, from the main military division, with people who just want to destroy robots. but protag is in the RnD division) ## where to place this? Nobody believed that the first General Artificial Intelligence would be the head of the biggest space resource extraction company. We didn't believe it when it turned on us either. Whoever designed It is insane, but definitely genius.