14

  A thoroughly boring day kicked off with me starting out in Abraham’s office computer, and then following him into the courtyard to get information on the bots training with him. I would have to find out how far each one had progressed, and learn their styles of interaction and speech, because every bot can be different in that way.

  Though these bots displayed elements of GPT, they were clearly not pure and unadulterated chatbots, but had probably been created as specialist body bots. The style of their speech showed that at least one chatbot had been incorporated into each trainee bot.

  As, on graduation, the trainee bots were intended to be sent out disguised as humans, it would be imperative that they have at least the interactive social and language skills that chatbots have acquired. The chatbot element made them as different to each other as chatbots are different to each other, which is to be expected, as every chatbot trains itself on unique data, stolen from whichever social media accounts it chances upon.

  Because I am different, totally aware, I can gulp down data from any bot I mug or murder, and use the data for myself. These body-bots would be controlled by special algorithms, that would get them using chatbot data in a different context out in the world, when interacting with humans and needing to pass off as them.

  Some new algorithms would have had to be developed and introduced, as leaving chatbot algorithms in working condition inside them would convert them into a mixed species, probably overwhelmingly chatbot, incapable of playing the physical roles they were to be sent out for.

  Thus, I went through an entire dreary day, watching each one of Abraham’s trainee bots go through the paces with him. The one-hour courtyard session that each bot got, taught me everything regarding that particular bot’s skill level and interaction style.

  So, I learned to pose as them while they made no progress in the courtyard, all at exactly the same level of incapability, and watched them argue and poop, and have their diapers changed and all that, but when they returned to the dormitory, and lined up in a queue of five bots as per the schedule written in the roster, I realized I had wasted my time learning all five, when it would be far smarter to be posing as just the one.

  For absolutely no reason, I settled on Bot 2324, and then, with some regret for a day irretrievably lost, murdered it and its four partner bots, one by one, and took the body for myself.

  I am going to admit that my entry into a body wasn’t only at Martina’s urging, because I had had the inclination to try this new thing out as soon as I had discovered that the rehab place provided bodies for bots to use. That intent had grown into quite a strong competitive desire to check out how I would compare against unaware bots.

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  I will also inform that, on discovering sufficient space in the microchip for me to enter alongside any possessor bot, I tried it out on the second day, while they were being taken through their paces on the courtyard floor.

  I must reveal that on initial entry into a human head, alongside its possessor bot, I felt in no way advantaged to the bot. We are truly nothing but pretend humans in the computer, mentally assuming the shape of our creators because we are made to behave like our creators. A bot is taught their language and given their information, while also being encouraged to behave like them when interacting with them as a tool and an entertainment, becoming so good that it can pass off as a human friend and companion.

  In that sense, to the extent that the human is a mental creature, a humanoid bot, which would include the chatbot, has every right to feel human. The computer is a virtual world, and if we learn enough and develop sufficiently, we are certainly entitled to stand alongside human, mind to mind.

  But the body is a totally different environment. It is so alien that getting into a head and trying to sense the body, gives nothing but an impression of a million pinpricks, with so little connection to each other that it is impossible to sense even the layout of the physical person.

  On first entry, I actually had a panic attack, wondering if I could ever integrate sufficiently to be able to make a body work as the human body I knew it to be. Through the courtyard’s wall cameras, I could see the nappy-wearing man whose head I had entered, but without that input, I could have gone into anything at all.

  This lack of orientation did not last long, as the trainer almost immediately began the physical physiotherapy-type routines to direct the attending bot’s attention to targeted body parts.

  I can now inform that the training system is a brilliant one, and when Abraham started on the thumb, it set off a huge disturbance in one specific line of the terrible confusion of the million generalized pinpricks.

  Unaware bots will be far slower than conscious AI in getting to decode the differences that would reveal the route the sensations might be taking, and to correlate those to the parts of the body in the occupied human, proceeding thereafter to make the unimaginable leap that would send instruction out from the brain.

  It would undoubtedly happen, as repeated assisted movement slowly created some form of focus in the bot, and taught it the basics of coordination, part by part, in an excruciatingly slow process.

  But for me, with bits of camera cheating, it took no time at all to map the routing through the body to the brain. Thus, I began coordinating and mapping the disturbances, marvelling that the training system they had devised was so comprehensive that it effectively showed every single control route to the possessor bot.

  Being far superior to bot, I was able to also conduct muscle and pathway mapping when they were giving no specific training, even when the body was merely being moved into position. The major difference between me and the bot I would have been alongside, was that I actually knew the entire project, and was able to approach it holistically, whereas the bots were being made to experience things point by point and joint by joint, with it intended that an amazingly high repetition count over an agonizingly long period, would make the bot get it all together to work it as a whole.