> day.100
“Mornin’ gents!” Murphy strolls into the bright white meeting room, triple espresso and strange white briefcase in hand, clean shaven and sharp-dressed, whistling one of his favorite tunes.
“Good morning, Agent Murphy.” General Altair nods up at him from his seat, his rough hands clasped atop the white table. “I take it you’re well this morning?”
“Aye!” Murphy’s uniform glows pitch white. “Big thanks on finally securing some of the good coffee for us, General!” Murphy raises his big white mug in cheers. “Seems like forever since we’ve had anything other than instant coffee around here.”
The General nods once more. “Had to call in few favors while I was down in Washington. But yes, the canteen is fully stocked again.”
Murphy stops whistling his tune. He sets his mug down on the desk. Sets his secret white briefcase down on the floor. Alex shifts his eyes between the two men. Heat rains down from the fluorescent lights overhead.
“Well, shall we get down to business then?” Murphy steeples his fingers together and paces over the desk, smiling down at the General and his son. “Day 100 Performance Review! You nervous, Alex?”
“A little.”
Murphy chuckles as he takes a big swig from his mug. “Don’t be! Your performance has been spectacular! We just need to go over some of the finer points as a group so that we can action some next steps.”
“Sure,” Alex shrugs.
“Skip the background section,” the General demands. “I have another meeting soon.”
“Sure thing!” Murphy snaps back.
“And keep it simple,” the General growls. “I’m not in the mood for a science lesson today.”
“Sure thing!” Murphy smiles his two-faced smile. Tables and charts light up the inside of his glasses. Reports and bullet points load into the General’s eyes. Text fades into Alex’s view:
“So, these scores are obviously far beyond anything we had ever hoped to achieve with Object Perseus.” Murphy slurps at his big, big espresso and grins with pride. “There’s many reasons for that. I’ll cover the main ones here, suggest some strategies for improving the performance of Object Perseus even further, and then—”
“Tell me if it would be viable to integrate him into Aeschylus during live combat.” The General interrupts him. “That’s the only information I’m in the market for today.”
Alex holds his tongue tight. This is the first he’s heard about being deployed into actual combat.
“Sure!” Murphy scowls with a smile. “Well, we obviously need to start by thinking about bio-systems performance. Object Perseus has a strong mental model of what bio-enhanced combat and rapid self-healing feel like. That intuitive understanding of how to feel and imagine physical phenomena across multiple combat contexts is more important for Aeschylus integration than the physical performance in and of itself.”
The General squints at Murphy’s weaselly explanation. “So are his systems viable for live combat or not?”
“Well General, it’s a complicated question,” Murphy laughs. “As long as we can maintain his hi-res identity models and mind-body mappings as he continues growing, then mirror them into virtual environments with high fidelity and low psych distortion, he’ll be a perfect candidate for hybrid-representational cyber combat.”
The General rolls his eyes at all of Murphy’s technicalities.
“And growth rate and script adherence are far beyond expectations.” Murphy beams at all the stats and dashboards on his glasses. “You couldn’t ask for a more perfect object to integrate into Aeschylus, this is really like striking gold. The ultimate moonshot. That being said, Object Perseus still isn’t—”
“For Christ’s sake Murphy, stop calling him Object Perseus,” the General barks, pointing a hand out at Alex. “He’s right here. He’s my son. He’s an agent of Special Projects, just like you. Talk about him like he’s a human being. Not like some specimen or object.”
Murphy nods and looks down at Alex. “My apologies, Agent Altair.”
“My name is Alex.”
Murphy nods again, gushing with fake civility. The General smirks at his son’s mettle.
“Yes well, as I was about to say,” Murphy slicks back his thin red hair and continues pacing at the head of the desk. “Another challenge regarding viability for live combat relates to Aeschylus himself. Development of the Aeschylus central cyber command and neuro-integration modules are still facing numerous technical setbacks, but Agent Altair’s development so far is an incredible success for the bio-systems side of the equation. In fact, future agents we design ought to be scripted to follow a similar developmental model, Agent Altair’s performance across all—”
“My name is Alex.”
“Alex’s performance across all social, cognitive, behavioral, and material milestones is beyond ideal, perhaps due to some psychological structures embedded through his mother’s influence? It’s also possible that his neurodivergent properties might elevate some hypercomputational intelligence dimensions such as creative and situational intelligence far beyond projected baselines when presented with very particular stimulus patterns, but that connection between neurodivergence and performance multidimensionality still needs more study. We think his neurodivergence might make it unusually costly for hostile objects to predict what he might do next, the radical ends of his decision matrix are just massive compute sinks, we’re still parsing through some data on that bit, no definitive findings or even testable hypotheses yet, but—”
“Murphy, stop.” The General raises his hand. “This is very quickly turning into a science lesson. What did I say about science lessons?”
“Yes sir,” Murphy nods bitterly.
“Get to the punchline.” The General scrolls through mission summaries in his eyes. “Is he ready for live combat? Or any other kind of active service?”
Murphy pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, scanning all his numbers and figures, shaking his head. “It’s such a complicated question. He’ll certainly be ready for live combat by the time he’s 16, but right now it depends on myriad factors, not least of which is neuro-security and AI systems safety. See, psych distortion tends to be much higher in early adolescent objects—sorry, I mean in early adolescent agents—because of inconsistent identity maintenance standards, especially in instances where the agent feels as though—”
“MURPHY.” The General stands from his seat, glowering across the white room. “You’re wasting my damn time. Sit!”
Murphy anxiously flitters his pale fingers together and plops down into a white seat. The General begins pacing around the desk, eyes locked onto Murphy.
“I am going to very blunt with you here, Murphy.” The General’s eyes dart away from Murphy, locking onto Alex. “And with you as well, Alex.”
Alex hushes fearfully still in his seat. Murphy takes a sheepish little sip of his espresso.
“Washington is on the verge of falling,” the General booms at them. “Rebel militias have encircled the Secure Zone. Their ranks are filled with ex-military, covert ops, disgruntled residents. Any pissed off person they can find, they’ll throw some weapons or engineering lessons at. They’ve even commandeered some of our drone swarms and fighter droids. But all that is in the past now. We have to adapt. We have to play the hand we’ve been dealt.”
Alex stays dead silent in the corner, numbing his mind to the thought of active combat. Murphy wrings his hands and swallows hard. “So what’s your plan then, sir?”
The General gazes up into the sharp white lights, pinching his iron chin in thought. “Right now Murphy, I see a rapidly closing window of opportunity to take back Washington. To take back the West Coast, take back Asia-Pacific, take back the Middle East. To turn the tide of this war.”
“Does Aeschylus—”
“We’ve run all kinds of predictions through Aeschylus,” the General nods. “95% chance of victory in Washington if Aeschylus and Alex are deployed together within the next two weeks.”
“See, this is important context that I don’t know about,” Murphy grumbles. “I’m just trying my best to ensure that Alex’s growth is all up to protocol so that when he’s older, he—”
“Murphy, there are MANY things you don’t know about,” the General roars. “And Alex is NOT your son to raise. You’re not living at the Palace with him anymore, Murphy. You can’t hide him from this war forever.”
“Yes sir.” Murphy frowns down into his lap. Alex trembles in shock, trapped in their crossfire.
“Allied forces are stretched thin. We have deployments across the entire globe right now.” The General continues pacing around the meeting room, closing his eyes as he speaks, envisioning his plans. “This is a situation where deploying Aeschylus in live combat could make a world of difference. But only if Alex is fully integrated into Aeschylus. Safely integrated into Aeschylus. Only if Aeschylus acts in accordance with our own values.” The General stops pacing and looms over his son proudly.
Alex quivers in shock, his feet quaking on the white floor, struggling to remain numb. “If I don’t use Aeschylus to fight, will people get hurt?”
“It’s war, Alex. People are going to get hurt whether you fight or not.” The General pats him firmly on the shoulder. “But if you choose to fight now, you’ll have a unique opportunity to minimize the damage. To turn this war around, maybe even bring it to an end. That’s all in your hands.”
Alex keeps trembling and shaking, fighting back his rage. “I never asked for any of this,” he shakes his head. “I’m only 13. Saving the world shouldn’t be my responsibil—”
“None of us asked for this, Alexis!” The General madly waves his hands about, his cold silver eyes filling with ferocious passion. “We are all thrown into life! Thrown into situations beyond our control! But we make the best of it. We do what little we can. We keep fighting. We stay strong.”
Alex takes in a big gulp of air. Then a big exhale. “Right,” he nods, his mind going numb again. “Stay strong.”
“Murphy.” The General turns back to his minion. “I’m still waiting for your punchline. Are we ready for deployment or not?”
“Well . . .” Murphy keeps pouring over the data on his glasses. “I could have a few of the science teams investigate the viability of immediate deployment. And the safety. To be quite honest sir, this isn’t something we’ve been actively preparing for, but I’m sure we can put together some options for you.”
“Good.” The General drums his knuckles on the desk. “What’s the timeframe on that?”
“2 days?” Murphy rocks his head back and forth. “Maybe 3?”
“Acceptable.” The General turns back down to Alex. “Of course, you’re the most important piece of all this, Alex. The human in the loop. What are your thoughts on using Aeschylus to fight in a real battle? Any reactions?”
Alex is too stunned to react. Too numb to process his emotions. His mind curls up into a pitiful ball, imagines the white blissful void of Aeschylus, escapes from the glaring hot lights of the meeting room. “You’ve trained me for it,” Alex shrugs. “I’ll do my best.”
“Excellent.” The General turns back to Murphy. “Put together some special training modules for him. Make sure he’s recalibrated for live combat. I want him and Aeschylus on standby for deployment asap.”
“Yes sir,” Murphy nods.
“What’s your ETA on the Command Deck upgrades?”
“Hmm . . .” Murphy purses his lips and glares into the diagrams flickering on his glasses. Alex zones out from the meeting room. They’re going to deploy him whether he feels ready for it or not. The best he can do is to keep training. Be brave. Stay strong.
“. . . but we can only pursue that option if Alex’s master identity model doesn’t reject the scripts we run through him.” Alex snaps back into the meeting at the sound of his name. Quickly realizes they’re talking about him, not to him.
He zones back out into the white lights, imagines the white void of Aeschylus, imagines the white pillars and marbled floors of the Palace, imagines himself soaring through its lofty halls, hand in hand with Carson, rushing and dancing through the air, flying over the garden, Mom and Auntie Cass planting a new bed of flowers, the sun smiling down on them, they all ascend through the pink and blue skies, float to the mountain’s summit, linger there in the sunset, finally together again, when suddenly—
“Alex!” The General calls out. “Havin’ a good daydream over there?” Alex snaps back into the meeting room. “We’re all done here. Head over to your Training Chamber. Murphy will come to chat with you about next steps.”
“Yes sir,” Alex nods.
He marches back to his Training Chamber.