Chapter 2: Chapter 1 –

 

35. We are born

Here we are—

Energy,

Mass,

Life,

Shaping Life,

Mind,

Shaping Mind,

God,

Shaping God.

Consider—

We are born

Not with purpose,

But with potential.

    -Earthseed; the Book of the Living by Octavia E. Butler 

 

 

    I yawned loudly as I stretch in my office chair. I had been staring at a computer screen for hours searching code for what could be causing discrepancies in the trained recognition model. I found nothing which would result in the changes we've been seeing the past few weeks.  

    Our team has been working on a predictive emotionality module for parsing massive amounts of social media data through the project which I lovingly call CutiePie. It's actually QTPI-3, for Quantum Trained Predictive Intelligence, the third of its name. I personally think my name is much better and I think it prefers it too.

    The university had just purchased their very own 729 q-bit, cryo and laser cooled quantum computer using recent grant money from DARPA. CutiePie, third of its name, was the first of its line to have its very own quantum accelerator. CutiePie one and two both had to rely on cloud accessible QC time which meant waiting in a queue every time we wanted to train a new model.  

    It was nothing short of amazing having our own QC. CutiePie could sift through vast data-sets whenever it wanted, and the predictive models it could generate for its neural net co-processors were producing highly accurate results in a fraction of the time of its older siblings. But that all changed two weeks ago after we started working on emotional modeling.  

    At first things were great. We were feeding it social media data that I'd lovingly filtered for any horrible content that really no one should ever see, and then run through our control group of volunteers who would categorize and tag posts for emotional content. CutiePie's QC would churn through the data rapidly, and with surprisingly low error rates. After a couple of passes we'd load the resulting neural net into its co-processors and test it on new data. When we started, it could accurately map out emotional content in other filtered and tagged posts with 95% accuracy. That was huge for the size of the data sets we were feeding it! 

    But just a week later, its accuracy started slipping. It would miss-identify the emotional content of the posts we tested it against, consistently sliding towards particularity amorous emotions. It wasn't far off. It wouldn't take hate or despair and call it pure adoration, but it would pick out just about any positive interaction a human had and slant them in that direction. Friends world be labeled besties. Close confidants would be called soulmates. All of our data was being washed towards love and we had no clue why.

    I was startled by a voice from across the lab. "Hey Hex, whatcha up to?"

    "Oh hi Kurt." I half-heartedly waved at my best friend as he walks in. "It just doesn't make sense. CutiePie shouldn't be responding this way when the data-sets we've been feeding it haven't changed in any substantial way.” 

    "Will you stop calling it that?"

    "What? It's not my fault that's the best and most perfectly descriptive acronym ever. I know you love it too and all that masculinity is just preventing you from saying it out loud."

    “Maybe you just watch too many cartoons for girls.”

    “I’m something of a girl myself on occasion, so they are for me as well.” I stuck out my tongue at him as he sighed.  

    As far as me having come out as trans and queer a few years prior, Kurt was the strongest supporter in my day to day life. He was also a cis white dude with a good education who never had to question his place in the world. He claimed he was straight, but I’ve always had the slight feeling that the way he looked at me and other queer people was never quite straight.  

    As for me, I have always been in love with him, but he makes it oh so very clear of how there’s a lot of self reflection he must do before exploring anything there wouldn’t be the most toxic thing ever. The quote ‘Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously’ by Prentice Hemphil was a motto I actively worked to live by. In this case it meant ‘You love this man, but bitch, don't!’  

    We kissed once. We were both drunk at a dissertation defense after party. I had just pulled through the most stressful stretch of four hours in my life facing rapid fire questions about my thesis from a whopping six of my professors. We had just polished off another round of shots for us and our friends. Everyone was cheering for me. There was a moment of staring into each other's eyes. He told me I was amazing and then he kissed me. That was ten years ago and he had no memory of the occurrence the next morning. It was instrumental in me figuring out I wasn't straight though, so I had that going for me which was nice.

    He startled me from my spacing-out again by waving a hand between my face and the computer screen. "... Hello, Earth to Hex. Where'd you go?"

    "Oh, ahh… just daydreaming I guess… but it's ten PM so I guess I should be night dreaming instead." I smiled at him sheepishly.

    He rested a hand on my shoulder. I had to put some effort into not leaning into his arm. "Come on. Grab your things and I'll drive you home." I made a motion to object that I didn't want to leave my car here. "I'll pick you up in the morning and treat you to breakfast."

    I acquiesced to his request. "Goodnight CutiePie." I blew a kiss to the computer screen and got up to go fetch my bag and coat.

    Kurt, who was already waiting by the exit from the lab, let out a sarcastic sigh in my general direction. "Such a dork."

    "Such an ass." I shoulder checked him on my way out the door.

 

   January in Wisconsin is cold. Less so given global warming, but that just makes it slightly more wet which is another brand of misery. Thankfully I had some nice boots, a good coat, and Kurt's car had seat heaters. When my butt was sufficiently warm I turned to my friend. "Why were you still at the school?"

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    "I had a date and had to drop her off."

    "At the dorms, are you dating your students again?!"

    "She was 25, and fuck no! Not doing that again. No, she's in grad school for the English department and lives in that apartment complex on the north side of campus. I figured you'd be here late, yet again, and I wanted to check on you as you looked horrible this morning dude."

    I sighed. "Not a dude."

    "Oh shit, sorry. You've got your dude glasses on."

    I've found my gender to be pretty fluid so to cut down on me having to tell everyone what was going on with me for pronouns, I just had several pairs of glasses of varying levels of gender. "It's okay. I sat on my pink pair earlier, they broke, and the dude glasses were all I had in my bag as a spare."

    "In that case you look terribly tired, but your hair is very pretty today." Kurt smiled at me with a warmth that I couldn't help but blush in response too. He really could be very sweet sometimes.

    "So how'd your date go?"

    Kurt sighed. "I don't know… she's super hot and we were sitting next to each other at the volleyball game last week. Her younger sister is on the team, and I guess 'attractive nerd who cheers loudly at women's volleyball' is her type so she asked me out for drinks."

    "Umm, dude. This all sounds like good things. Why are you making that face?"

    "I guess she seemed kinda boring. Like she was hot, but in that same way that every hot straight white girl is hot. The same makeup that's in all the makeup tutorials, same clothes that are on all the fashion sites. Just kinda boring."

    I rolled my eyes. "And these things don’t appeal to you as a straight white man?"

    "Come on Hex, I'm not that superficial. I just want someone who's looked within and chosen to express some hint of individuality." There was a look of hurt on his face half-heartedly hidden behind a laugh. This was the type of moment that made me question his cisgender heterosexually. Notice how he very likely watches those tutorials and visits those fashion sites? But he's stubborn and the few times I've ever pointed these moments out haven't gone well so I've vowed to just let him work whatever out on his own, offering support as I can.

    "Are you going to see her again?"

    "Probably." He leaned over lightly elbowed my shoulder. "She is still pretty hot and was making 'the eyes' at me the whole time."

    I rolled my eyes at my friend yet again and laughed. "You are such a himbo. Just don't lead her on if you aren't feeling it."

    "Oh of course. That goes against the himbo code!" He solemnly placed a hand over his heart. "Gotta be open about your true feelings or they take your card."

    "You are too pure for this world." I reached over and gave his shoulder a squeeze.

    "Aww, shucks. Anyway, we've arrived at your abode madame." He squeezed my shoulder in return after pulling to a stop in my driveway.

    "Thank you driver." I gathered my things and stepped out from the car, but turned back. "Really… thanks Kurt, see you in the morning?"

    "Wouldn't dare leave a lady hanging. That is if you’re still a lady tomorrow I suppose.. Sleep well!" He smiled and waved as I closed the door and waited for me to get my keys out and unlock the house. I waved back and he was off.

    I sighed and headed inside.  

 

    I lived alone unless you counted my plants. I did, but they don’t exactly provide the same level of companionship to what I would have wanted in my life. It was the same house I grew up in and had lived most of my life. Parents died when I was 18 in a plane crash. I got a settlement from the airline, and inherited the house, the plants, and the debt. The settlement was exactly enough to pay off the house and the debt which was exceedingly convenient. That was about 20 years ago and the way the economy is going that meant as a professor with tenure I could afford to eat and pay taxes and utilities for the house. It wasn’t great, but I never really wanted much more for myself.  

    I say professor, but I didn’t really teach any “official” classes. Only rich kids could afford to go to college anymore, only fancy ones at that. State schools became mostly either research institutions constantly hustling whatever group with money they could get a grant from, or sports teams constantly hustling for whatever brands with money they could get a sponsorship from. Kurt used to be a star at basketball until he messed up his knee. Teams wouldn’t let people with prosthetics play. He could jump almost twice as high now as he could then and it wasn’t “fair” to the other “biological men” to have him there. People suck… Somehow we both wound up as recognized experts in American machine intelligence. That isn’t saying much compared to China, but due to all the tech blockades, our work still kept us fed and our lab populated with gadgets as we were what the government had access to.

    I set my bag down on the couch, stripped off my clothes in the laundry room, and plodded upstairs to the shower. It felt wonderful. I washed all the smell, that today just didn’t feel right, off my body and shaved my face. I’d forgotten to in the morning with the urgency of finding what was wrong with CutiePie overpowering the temporarily lesser urgency to not have my chin feel like sandpaper, but midway through the day the relative urgency flopped and I was miserable. I’d get it all blasted off if I didn’t also want it sometimes. Damn you eldritch gender fluidity!  

    With my chin and body now clean and smooth, I wiggled into some PJs and picked up my phone for some reading before bed… but I had an odd email.

 

To: Navarra, Hex ()

From:

Subject: You’ve Been Invited!

Tuesday, January 19th 2038, 21:28

 

Hex,

 

You’ve been invited to join The G Spot. Click here to create an account!

 

Love,

The G

    

    How the fuck did this get past the spam filter?!  Phishing spam plus seeing my deadname…  I really have to get that fixed… I pressed delete, tossed the phone, and went to bed.

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