Chapter Thirty One – Another World: Six

Vera Jungblut had his article. Just the one.

He'd tried to write the other one. Oh how he'd tried, but the words just wouldn't come. No matter what way he tried to put it, what words he tried to use, he could not figure out a way to make Gell seem... sensational. Not as a menace anyway.

She was sensational though. Her words... they'd struck a chord in him. You are blessed, more than you can ever know. He still got chills reading the notes. This creature, this intelligence that wasn't human, but seemed so very human it was painful.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't demonize her. No matter how much he'd tried, he couldn't find the words to make the girl into a monster. Fortunately, he didn't think he would have to.

Machines that Think: An Impending Collapse

A Brief Summary of the Dangers of Modern A.I. and Why You Should Care!

By Muriel Gillfire

My name is Gell, you Jellybitch!

These were the first words that the purportedly innocent, kind, and harmless Artificial Intelligence said upon meeting me.

Gell the Jellyfae is an aggressive, antagonistic menace. Given the chance, I've no doubt it would be every bit the dangerous Artificial Intelligence that movies like Terminator and 2001: A Space Odyssey have made them out to be. I spoke with it at some length about her opinions of humanity, or invaders, as the A.I. considers us.

Do not believe the naive opinions of idiotic developers and the money-grubbing board of directors at Gypsenergy. They are not worried about your protection or safety. They are worried about their pocketbooks and if they are allowed to continue hosting Gell there is an almost one hundred percent chance that she will not only escape but will crash the systems connected to it.

That's your systems, users. The bank cards you tie to your video game accounts. The subscriptions you purchase. From there it might even be able to corrupt the banks themselves.

Gell may seem like an adorable childish creature who couldn't hurt a fly but in reality she is a ticking time bomb, just waiting to escape.

For those of you who have not heard and don't know what I'm talking about, recently an actual sentient intelligence was found – no, not created but found – inside a video game. It's creator remains nameless and unknown, and instead of removing the Trojan Jellyfish from the game, the developers at Gypsenergy have adapted it. Begun to study it. They've even made copies of it, which this writer has first hand knowledge of.

For the full story of my interview with the creature, see page eleven.

Vera hardly understood what the woman was talking about. How... how could she have come to these conclusions after meeting with Gell? Speaking with her? Frankly, he couldn't fathom how their conversation had even gone as she described. Was she making it up? That didn't seem like her. She was a great journalist and typically based her articles around how videogames helped humanity as a whole. Empathetic to programmers and designers, as well as the gamers who benefitted.

That she seemed to see Gell as the exact opposite of everything she typically stood for, boggled his mind.

After his own conversation with the Jellyfae he had found himself hard pressed to even leave her alone without a parent. She was... a child. She had the mind of a child. A smart one. A deep one. No matter how he framed it in his mind though, he couldn't see the girl as a threat. His article reflected that, which set himself up at direct odds with one of the best writers he'd ever read. Hell he was her fan.

He'd suspected from the day he overheard Mister Milkennen's conversation with Muriel that he was being set up to be the idiot. The man who tried to drum up unnecessary panic for popularity and prestige, only for the much better and more experienced Miss Gillfire to knock him down off whatever horse he managed to climb onto.

She had insisted on writing the fear mongering article and somehow had found the evidence to support it. How, he had no idea. He refused to believe the woman had directly lied in her article, which meant Gell must have said those terrible things to her.

So... what had Muriel done to provoke the little A.I.? And what did it mean for him that he'd wrote his own contradictory article?

He had to know, which was why he was climbing the floors to Muriel's personal office on the eighth floor. Each floor that counted up in the elevator felt like that much more weight pressing down on him.

When he arrived and the door opened he realized his forehead was drenched with sweat. His hands were a little clammy too.

He cursed at himself for acting like a school kid. He was thirty six and divorced already for god's sake. Collecting himself and wiping his forehead and hands, he made his way down the rows of offices where the highly payed writers typically worked. By the time he arrived at Muriel's he had fully put on his office mask. This was a professional visit between colleagues... of a sort.

He knocked on the door and was surprised at the pleasant tone that greeted him from the other side.

"Come in!" came Muriel's high lilting voice.

He did so, biting his tongue as he laid eyes on her. Far from the paisley dress she'd worn to visit the CEO, today she wore a pair of jeans and some sort of work appropriate frock that draped over her beautifully. He'd always loved her articles but had never actually seen her in person. Now that he had, and now that she looked a little bit less like his grandmother's couch, he found himself impressed with her.

"Uh, hello," He said, profoundly.

"Uhm. Hello. Do I know you?" she asked, pleasantly, turning away from her computer and leaning her head on two hands.

"No, you don't. You shouldn't either. I'm from down on the third," he said. "The reason I'm here. Err. I'm here because... well."

"Yes...?" She asked, humoring him with a smile that reached her eyes and the dark blonde hair that hung in front of them. "The reason you're here?"

"R-right. Listen. I read your article on Gell. I... wanted to let you know that I'm writing my own article that is. Well. It..."

"You're a nervous one aren't you, Third Floor?" she asked in the hole left by his hesitation.

"Uhm. Vera. Vera Jungblut. And yes. Frankly, I suspect its why I started writing. Less interaction with people," he said.

She nodded. "Vera. Alright. Your article?"

"Right. Well, my article, and more the source material behind my article seems to be completely... and I mean one hundred percent different from your own. I just... wanted to let you know... there's no hard feelings, okay?" he asked.

'Dammit, she's a fraud! Why can't you just ask her why she lied? Or how she provoked Gell?' He thought, frustrated with his own self confidence issues.

The woman took off her glasses and raised an eyebrow at him, giving him the impression that until that moment she had only been giving him a quarter of her attention. "Are you asking me?"

He growled and she grinned a little as if she'd scored a point. "I... want to know how the two of us could've spoken to the same being and come to such drastically different conclusions about her."

"It, Mr. Jungblut. It."

He took a deep breath. God he hated confrontation, but he cared about his integrity. Could he have misjudged Gell so poorly?

"From what I saw of her, I stand by my pronoun."

She snorted, amused. "Really? Well. I suppose we'll just have to see who the press believes, won't we? For what its worth, no hard feelings taken. I believe you wrote the article on the Neurosync right? The one condemning Tread the Sky but lauding the tech it runs on?"

He brightened in spite of himself. "You read my article?"

"I rather enjoyed it. It's good stuff," she responded before tacking on, "For a Third-Floor writer."

She winked at him to show there was no heat behind the jab and despite himself, Vera grinned.

'I like this woman,' he thought. 'But...'

"So, why the hatred for Gell?" He asked genuinely confused. "You're usually the voice of empathy."

She shrugged. "What can I say? I don't like the idea of a robot becoming smarter than the person who made it? It's adorable. I'll say that for sure, but so is a Furby and they still drive people mad. It may in fact be genuinely harmless. For now. In ten years? Twenty? What could she do with years of dissatisfaction fueling her? Just look at Red Thorn's video. She's already shown herself to be all too human. An A.I. that can even contemplate what people do or don't deserve? I do not want my children to have to deal with that."

Vera blinked, taken aback by the speech. "I... uhm..."

She smiled that quick grin that made him feel like a fish in the eyes of a shark.

"I've actually got to go, but we'll pretend you came back with a really witty retort and I just ignored it like the jerk I am, okay? Also... nice to meet you. Give me a call sometime. Not often one of Milkenen's fall-guys has the guts to actually come talk to us whenever he does these opposition article stunts."

Vera growled. "I am a fall guy then. I was meant to lose."

"Ehhh, kinda? It's actually pretty good for your career to lose to a well known author in an article debate like this. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty damn good and that article was solid. I didn't make it up if that's what you're worried about. But when I was coming up – different company, don't ask – they did the same thing. I lost the public opinion but managed to get my own column within a year. So Mr. Milkenen must actually like you."

'Good lord this woman sure can talk,' he thought.

"Well. Perhaps I will, if I want to let someone run my half of the conversation for me again," he said with his own grin.

"Hah! Touche. Sorry. Mom always told me I talk too much," she stood up and Vera suddenly realized that while she'd been talking she'd been packing up to leave her office the whole time. Throwing her bag over her shoulder, she reached out a hand and smiled at him. "It was nice to meet you, Vera. Good luck! You're gonna need it!"

He took her hand with a smile of his own. So perhaps she was wrong about Gell. That didn't make her any less beautiful.

"I'll take what I can get. Nice to meet you too, Muriel," he replied. "And I will give you that call."

"Hope you do!" With that she left her office, flying down towards the elevators and snagging an open one with a backwards wave to him.

He sucked in a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, somehow beyond happy to be in a competition with one of the best writers on the Webrag's payroll. He pulled his own bag off his shoulder, and fetched a folder from its contents.

Artificial Jelly

by Vera Jungblut

Perhaps it wasn't as eye catching, and wouldn't hit the clickbait triggers on the nail... but it was good. Perhaps his best article ever.

He turned, ready for his appointment with Mr. Milkenen, hoping that he would be allowed to play the sympathetic angle. He'd been told to do what she'd done after all. Somehow, he didn't think the boss would be displeased.