The Lifecycle of Software Objects (9 page)

"Well, it wouldn't be with his salesmanship. He's got a video of the Xenotherians that he shows anthropologists, to whet their appetites. He let me see a little bit of it."

"And?"

He shrugs, raises his hands. "I could've been looking at a hive of weedbots for all that I understood."

Ana laughs. "Well, maybe that's good. Maybe the more alien they are, the more interesting they'll be."

Derek laughs too, imagining the irony: after all the work they did at Blue Gamma to make digients appealing, what if it turns out that the alien ones are what people are more interested in?

Another two months go by. The user group's attempts at fund-raising don't meet with much success; the charitably inclined are growing fatigued of hearing about natural endangered species, let alone artificial ones, and digients aren't nearly as photogenic as dolphins. The flow of donations has never risen above a trickle.

The stress of being confined to Data Earth is definitely taking a toll on the digients; the owners try to spend more time with them to keep them from getting bored, but it's no substitute for a fully populated virtual world. Ana also tries to shield Jax from the problems surrounding the Neuroblast port, but he's aware of it nonetheless. One day when she comes home from work, she logs in to find him visibly agitated.

"Want ask you about porting," he says, with no prelude.

"What about it?"

"Before thought it just another upgrade, like before. Now think it much bigger. More like uploading, except with digients instead people, right?"

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"You seen video with mouse?"

Ana knows the one Jax is referring to: newly released by an uploading research team, it shows a white mouse being flash-frozen and then vaporized, one micrometer at a time, into curls of smoke by a scanning electron beam, and then instantiated in a test scape where it's virtually thawed and awakened. The mouse immediately has a seizure, convulsing piteously for a couple of subjective minutes before it dies. It's currently the record-holder for longest survival time for an uploaded mammal.

"Nothing like that will happen to you," she assures him.

"You mean I not remember if happens," says Jax. "I only remember if transition successful."

"No one's going to run you, or anyone else, on an untested engine. When Neuroblast has been ported, we'll run test suites on it and fix all the bugs before we run a digient. Those test suites don't feel anything."

"Researchers ran test suites before they uploaded mice?"

Jax is good at asking the tough questions. "The mice were the test suites," Ana admits. "But that's because no one has the source code to organic brains, so they can't write test suites that are simpler than real mice. We have the source code for Neuroblast, so we don't have that problem."

"But you don't have money afford port."

"No, not right now, but we're going to get it." She hopes she sounds more confident than she feels.

"How I help? How I make money?"

"Thanks, Jax, but right now there isn't a way for you to make money," she says. "For now your job is to just keep studying and do well in your classes."

"Yes, know that: now study, later do other things. What if now I get loan, then pay back later when earn money?"

"Let me worry about that, Jax."

Jax looks glum. "Okay."

In fact, what Jax suggests is almost exactly what the user group has attempted recently by looking for corporate investors. It's an avenue opened up by VirlFriday's success in selling digients as personal assistants. It took several years, but Talbot finally managed to raise an instance of Andro that would work for anyone; VirlFriday has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It's the first demonstration that a digient can actually be profitable, and several other companies are looking to duplicate Talbot's achievement.

One of those companies is called Polytope, who've announced plans for launching an enormous breeding program to create the next Andro. The user group contacted them and offered them a stake in the Neuroblast digients' future: in exchange for paying to port the Neuroblast engine, Polytope would get a percentage of any income generated by the digients in perpetuity. The group was more hopeful than it had been in months, but the company's answer was no; the only digients that Polytope is interested in are Sophonce digients, whose obsessive focus is a necessity if they're going to replace conventional software.

The user group has briefly discussed the possibility of paying for the port out of their own pockets, but it's clearly not feasible. As a result, some members are considering the unthinkable:

FROM: Stuart Gust

I hate being the one to bring this up, but someone has to. What about temporarily suspending the digients for a year or so, until we've raised the money for the port?

FROM: Derek Brooks

You know what happens when anyone suspends their digient. Temporary becomes indefinite becomes permanent.

FROM: Ana Alvarado

I couldn't agree more. It's just too easy to get into perpetual postponement mode. Have you ever heard of anyone restarting a digient that they'd suspended for more than six months? I haven't.

FROM: Stuart Gust

But we're not like those people. They suspended their digients because they were tired of them. We'll miss our digients every day that they're suspended; it'll be an incentive for us to raise the money.

FROM: Ana Alvarado

If you think suspending Zaff will increase your motivation, go ahead. Keeping Jax awake is what keeps me motivated.

Ana has no doubts when she posts her reply on the forum, but the conversation is more difficult when, a few days later, Jax brings up the issue himself. The two of them are in the private Data Earth, where she is showing him around a new game continent. It's a classic, one that Ana enjoyed years ago, and it's recently been released for free, so the user group instantiated a copy for the digients. She tries to convey her enthusiasm for it, pointing out what distinguishes it from the other game continents that the digients have grown bored with, but Jax sees the continent for what it is: yet another attempt to keep him occupied while they wait for Neuroblast to be ported.

As they walk through a deserted medieval town square, Jax says, "Sometimes wish I just be suspended, not have to wait more. Restarted when I can enter Real Space, feel like no time passed."

The comment catches Ana off-guard. None of the digients have access to the user-group forums, so Jax must have come up with the idea on his own. "Do you really want that?" she asks.

"Not really. Want stay awake, know what happening. But sometimes get frustrated." Then, he asks, "You sometimes wish you don't have take care me?"

She makes sure Jax is looking her in the face before she replies. "My life might be simpler if I didn't have you to take care of, but it wouldn't be as happy. I love you, Jax."

"Love you too."

Driving home from work, Derek gets a message from Ana saying that she'd been contacted by someone at Polytope, so as soon as he gets home he calls her. "So what happened?" he asks.

Ana looks bemused. "It was a very strange call."

"Strange how?"

"They're offering me a job."

"Really? Doing what?"

"Training their Sophonce digients," she says. "Because of all my previous experience, they want me to be the team leader. They offered a great salary, three years guaranteed employment, and a signing bonus that's, frankly, fabulous. There's a catch, though."

"Well? Don't keep me in suspense."

"All their trainers are required to use InstantRapport."

Derek's eyes widen. "You're kidding," he says. InstantRapport is one of the smart transdermals, a patch that delivers doses of an oxytocin-opioid cocktail whenever the wearer is in the presence of a specific person. It's used to strengthen rocky marriages and strained parent-child relationships, and it's recently become available without a prescription. "What the hell for?"

"They figure that affection will produce better results, and the only way trainers will feel affection for Sophonce digients is with pharmaceutical intervention."

"Oh, I get it. It's a way to increase employee productivity." He knows plenty of people who take nootropics or use transcranial magnetic stimulation to boost their performance at work, but so far no employer has made it a requirement. He shakes his head in disbelief. "If their digients are so hard to love, you would think they'd take a hint and switch to Neuroblast digients."

"I said something similar to them, but they weren't interested. I had an idea, though." Ana leans forward. "I might be able to change their minds if I go work for them."

"How do you figure?"

"It'd be an opportunity to show Jax to Polytope's management on an ongoing basis. I could log into our private Data Earth from work, maybe even bring him in wearing the robot body. What better way to demonstrate how versatile the Neuroblast engine is? And once they realize that, they'll port it to Real Space."

Derek considers it. "Assuming they don't forbid you from spending time with Jax during work hours—"

"Give me some credit. I wouldn't give them the hard sell; I'd be subtle about it."

"It might work," he says. "But they'd make you wear the Instant Rapport patch. Is the chance worth that?"

Ana gives a frustrated shrug. "I don't know. It sure as hell isn't my first choice. But sometimes we have to take a chance, right? Push things a little."

He isn't sure what to say. "What does Kyle think about it?"

She sighs."He's totally against it. He doesn't like the idea of me taking InstantRapport, and he definitely doesn't think the chances are good enough to justify it." She pauses, and then says, "But he doesn't feel the same way about digients that you or I do, so of course he'd say that. For him, the payoff doesn't seem that big."

Ana's clearly expecting support and he obliges, but privately his thoughts are more conflicted. He has reservations about what she's proposing, but he's hesitant about saying so.

He hates that he has such thoughts, but on the occasions that Ana has mentioned having difficulties with Kyle, he daydreams about the two of them splitting up. He's told himself that he would never do anything to drive them apart, but if Kyle doesn't share Ana's commitment to the digients, Derek isn't doing anything wrong by showing that he does. If that suggests to Ana that he's a better match for her than Kyle, he can't be blamed for that.

The question is whether he really thinks it's a good idea for Ana to accept Polytope's job offer. He's not sure he does, but until he's sure, he's going to be supportive.

After he gets off the phone, Derek logs onto the private Data Earth to spend time with Marco and Polo. They're playing a game of zero-gee racquetball, but descend from the court when they see him.

"Met nice visitors today," says Marco.

"Really? Do you know who they were?"

"Person name Jennifer, and person name Roland."

Derek checks the visitor log, and is dismayed by what he sees: Jennifer Chase and Roland Michaels are employees of a company called Binary Desire, maker of sex dolls both virtual and physical.

This isn't the first time the user group has received an inquiry from someone wanting to use the digients for sex. The vast majority of sex dolls are still controlled by conventional software to enact scripted scenarios, but for as long as there have been digients, there have been people trying to have sex with them; the typical procedure is to copy a public-domain digient and reconfigure its reward map so that it enjoys whatever its owner finds arousing. Critics consider it the equivalent of having a dog lick peanut butter off your genitals, and it's not an unfair comparison, either in terms of the intelligence of the digients or the sophistication of the training. Certainly there aren't any digients remotely as person-like as Marco or Polo available for sex right now, so the user group gets occasional inquiries from sex-doll makers interested in purchasing copies of the digients. Everyone in the group has agreed that they should ignore such inquiries.

But according to the log, Chase and Michaels were escorted in by Felix Radcliffe.

Derek tells Marco and Polo to resume their game, and then calls Felix. "What the hell were you thinking? Bringing in Binary Desire?"

"They did not attempt to sex the digients."

"I can see that." He has the recording of their visit playing at double-speed in another window.

"They had conversation with them."

Talking to Felix sometimes feels like addressing an alien. "We had an understanding about sex-doll makers. Do you remember that?"

"These people are not like the others. I like the way they think."

He's afraid to ask what that means.

"If you like them, bring them to Data Mars and show them your Xenotherians."

"I did show them," says Felix. "They were not interested."

Of course they weren't, Derek realizes; the demand for sex with Lojban-speaking tripods would be microscopic. But he sees that Felix is being honest, that it wouldn't bother him to prostitute the Xenotherians if it would help finance his first-contact experiment. Felix may be eccentric, but he's not a hypocrite.

"Then that should have been the end of it," he says. "We may have to ban you from Data Earth."

"You should talk to these people."

"No, we shouldn't."

"They will pay you for listening to them. They will send a message containing the specifics."

Derek almost laughs. Binary Desire must be pretty desperate if they're paying people to listen to a sales pitch. "Messages are fine. But I'm putting those people on the ban list, and I don't want you bringing in anyone else from a sex-doll maker. Is that clear?"

"That is clear," says Felix, and hangs up.

Derek shakes his head. Normally he wouldn't consider listening to such a sales pitch, even for money, because he doesn't want to give the impression that he'd be willing to sell Marco and Polo as sex objects.

But right now the user group needs every dollar it can get. If listening to one company's presentation could encourage other companies to pay for the same opportunity, then it might be worthwhile. He restarts the video of the visitors' meeting with the digients and watches it at regular speed.