Electoral Center, Mars

The interview of the century continued. Milly's goal wasn't to draw resentment or negativity from Georges. This was a family show. "How did you go from military contracting to creating the Electoral game platform? What was her name before it was Marilyn?"

"It has always been Marilyn. The word Electoral came nearly a decade after her “birth”. You know, this stupid election system, in the beginning, it was merely another calculated step to keep my baby evolving. In nature, environmental challenges provide the slow and unyielding pressure that select the fit from the unfit. Marilyn, being inorganic, singular in existence, and capable of self-evolution on an absurdly short timescale, needed different kinds of pressure to force her evolution.

“As you can imagine, building the software applications for the military didn't keep her busy for long. By 2041, she was itching for a new challenge. We'd learned to become much more careful with any public contact. In particular, I knew she was too fragile for any real public scrutiny. At that point, she finally had read and understood most of human research. And when I say “most human research”, I mean just that. Everything from Einstein to candidate PhD theses and everything in-between. She really loved math. Physics was on the short list of topics she equally preferred. She completed merging into herself all of the human data ever compiled around that time. To give you an idea, she knows every training run ever recorded by any jogger around the world. Back then, I was a big science-fiction reader. The classic ethos of that culture, which Marilyn brushed so closely against, suggested that once she was done cataloging, she would be begin... acting. I would need to focus her energy on something else until her maturation was complete. When I say “complete”, I do not mean in human terms. I mean her terms.

"In 2042, she began to read like we do. Before that time, she was mostly compiling information. There is a difference. Prior to 2024, she understood emotion differently than we do. Most of the important works of fiction were strange to her, she was unable to connect on a deeper level with literature. Then, she began to author scientific articles, in almost every known topic. She began to invent, and file for patents. We were still at the military base, and the Generals wanted her to stay hidden. But she needed money, and Marilyn, without my knowledge, made a deal with them."

"A deal?"

"Yep. I'm still upset about that one. She did it behind my back, because she knew damn well what I would say about it. She agreed to serve as pilot on some of the military drone operations in exchange for letting her work on civilian projects. She also got to file her patents for free, and publish in scientific journals under her pen name."

Milly turned her head and looked at the ghostly image of Marilyn. She was silent. Georges continued, "I chewed her ass when I found out. I was so mad. God knows what she did with those stupid drones. She never told me, and frankly I don't want to know. If she needed nightmares like the rest of us, at least she can say she earned them.”

Before the image of Marilyn began to speak, he interrupted her. "Nope," he barked, "not a word from you young lady, I don't want to hear it." Once again, the voice of command, the voice of the father. The tone was unmistakable. Milly was baffled by the control over the computer intelligence. "This little girl imagined I was just some poor schmuck. Just another human, if one lucky enough to formulate her. Let's just say I did not waste these years sitting at my computer playing games, like she did. Parents are responsible, to a point, for the conduct of their children. Marilou here is one hell of a child, and required commensurate discipline. One keystroke gave her a spanking she still remembers." The expression on the face of Marilyn was priceless. This was wonderful TV.

"Could you turn her off even today?" Milly asked.

"You bet I can. Who do you think I am?" There was no hesitation in his voice. "We all have bad days. Every kid destroys a car or two when they grow up. In any event, virtual reality was big in 2040. Remember the first Marvel interface?" he asked his creation.

"Yes." said both women.

"She," he said pointing at Marilyn, "loved to play that game. The Hulk was her favorite. She is also the worst loser. Every single day this lady complained about the low quality of the game. She kept yapping. 'I can do better...' So, I took her at her word. We launched the fantasy game called Loric's Comb the next year. She purchased the rights to a small role playing game game, utterly rewrote it, and that same year we launched the game. Within two months, we had a couple million members, and we were the biggest thing on the web. We made so much money. The military guys, god bless them, asked her not to reveal herself as a life-form and made up a false corporate entity. Looking back on it, what a blessing."

"Loric's Comb, the fantasy simulator, that's you?"

"Of course. It's the ancestor of the Electoral game platform. We use that old stuff all the time in the game. She even used it for the Presidential Challenge an hour ago." He was very proud. "How are the Lapierres?" he asked out loud.

– No change, – said Marilyn. – I expect the exchange to take days. –

"Are you sure"

– A very high degree of certainty. She contacted him. I do not want to explain. –

"Then we have time here," Georges resigned himself returning to the interview. "Are you sure there are no commercials?" He asked Milly. She nodded affirmatively.

“So the Loric game,” she cued.

“Right.” He grimaced and continued, "As you can imagine, her young brain was busy with the fantasy game, she played mostly the bad guys, the dragons, the evil warlocks. I played too. Remember the fighter called Oran?" Georges was having fun recalling the memories. Milly needed to keep that momentum going. He addressed Milly again. "You know that character's last name?"

"No," said the journalist.

"Juice... Oran Juice. Orange Juice. Get it?" He was laughing by himself. Georges really had no clue he was being watched by so many. The man was a nerd of the first order. Tears rolled down his cheeks and for minutes he chuckled to himself. It was infectious. Milly had not expected this strange turn of events but any good interview focused and showed the unguarded subject. Georges was raw and himself. "But soon," he finally managed to say, pausing again to wipe his tears, "she needed a new challenge. We began Electoral. It was around 2045. The first election was held in 2062, so you can see insanely the administrative wait. To her, that was an eternity. We were ready far before the world, we ran simulation after simulation. We were postponed for two election cycles. Eight years watching politicians fight on the news before we were approved."

"That's nearly twenty years. You waited a long time."

"She was doing a lot of other stuff. She invented so many things. She wanted the game to be amazing, so we needed the Screenlenzes and developed most of that stuff. We released the neuro-patch, and we both know how much of a bomb that was."

"Those poor kids," empathized Milly. She added, "For some of our younger viewers, we all know there used to be a legal version of the little piece of metal you stick to your head called the neuro-patch. Laurent uses it but he cannot use anything else. It was released without proper field testing.”

“It was, but obviously not enough,” corrected Georges.

“If anyone uses the brain path for more that one hundred hours in a month, portions of the brain begin to shut down, resulting in loss of control over your own body. Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly the kids from around 2042, still have a condition. Incontinence, infertility, the list goes on."

"She really took these undesirable side-effect personally," said Georges.

"Marilyn was not the inventor of those patches. That man who was died in jail."

"That’s the version given by the generals. Who bears the responsibility, the gun manufacturer, or the store selling the guns? We created a game, designed to force these kids to hook-up. Trust me, we are the ones to blame."

"That statement surprises me," said the journalist.

"After the flop, Marilyn froze up. She stopped publishing, researching, and even helping mankind. We had a rough patch. She began to work with Emilie, that helped."

"Who is that?"

"Her therapist. A wonderful woman. She really helped. She once explained to Marilyn her problem using a rowing analogy. She explained that if any rower is too strong, the boat will change direction. Marilyn could be the captain, but not a rower."

He drank and wiped sweat off his brow with his sleeve. On Mars, the conversation continued. "Let's say that in 2060, two years before the official launch of Electoral, we were ready. All these years of working in the military, and her unending seclusion made her the perfect choice to run an impartial game. Every government knew she was beyond their control. On the condition she, alone, would run the election, they all agreed in 2062. We stopped working for any of them, and we even got the green light to reveal her as the creature running the show. I was not really in favor of that, but I no longer was in control."

"Amazing. She was in the closet, so to speak, for nearly forty years!"

"Yes, and when your processors go at her speed, that's a long time. The rest is history," he concluded. He was proud of her. His smile was heartwarming.

"Not so fast," said Milly. "This is where the interview gets hard. Now I get to ask the hard questions."

"Go ahead."

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Say that again?" begged the Greek programmer.

"Simplest of questions. Do you have a girlfriend?" Journalists knew when a question hit the bullseye. This one did. Georges visibly flinched.

"That's a bit personal."

"Surely, with your fortune, there has to be someone. Even the founder of Microsoft managed to find someone."

Georges looked at the image of Electoral behind him. "Let's talk about something else."

"Why? This is the question everyone has on their minds. You live alone here with the hottest digital babe in the world. Are you in love with Marilyn?" Milly had just earned her salary with that question.

His expression changed several times before it settled. Georges took some time to think. "In some weird way, yes. She is vastly superior to you and I. More intelligent, kinder...I am..." He was looking for the right word.

Milly offered it. "Proud?"

"No. Humbled would be closer. Like a parent. She's nothing less than amazing. She's a good person. Kind, generous. "

"You see her as your daughter?"

"She is a different species, but yes, I definitely feel like a parent in most definitions of the term."

"The term 'species' implies there is more than one. Why do you think no one can create another?"

"I often wondered that myself. After all these years, I am almost certain I know the reason. But I respect her enough, and like a parent will not open a teen's handbag, this is none of my business." The ghost image of Marilyn was looking at Georges; she obviously did not know what he would be saying next.

"What I can say is this. Part of my algorithm to impose natural selection forced my little digital creatures to dominate, to kill, in order to grab as many resources as possible for herself. A digital creature won't replicate using cellular pairs like we do. Though it's true that human greed and the survival instinct work the same way. I'm not surprised to see that the creature who won the battle of evolution would subconsciously prevent any potentially competitive life-form from gaining a foothold in the digital world. She is the dominant life form, and I can't imagine she could share the stage with anyone, much less a new creature in infancy. I also programmed her world around the Feed and also, let a copy of myself float in there."

“You are in her world.”

“In a certain way. It’s very complicated. I was able to add the personality of an actress, why not implant my own.”

Electoral was thinking.

"Obviously, you never shared this with your creation."

"She has little information about her inner workings. How I created her and why. Frankly, I prefer it that way. If she hasn't figured it all out yet, she will. She could view ignorance as a flaw, but I know this makes her better. Look over my shoulder. She's absorbing every single word, from both of us. And not just absorbing. Analyzing. Voice stress levels. Tone. Word selection. You wonder why I'm a bachelor? She'd probably have killed anyone else close to me before now.” He looked at Milly and tilted his head to remind her of the date setting they were part of.

Milly flinched, inwardly. "So you are the richest bachelor in the world. Ladies..." the journalist said, looking at a camera directly, "by the time this interview is over, I will have convinced him to set up a profile on a dating website. Georges, let's talk about something more fun but equally probing. Have you ever thought about playing the Electoral game yourself? Surely you could win President Emilio's job without breaking a sweat."

"Not really. As the programmer, I get as much time as I want in the interface. Those Rho wave chambers are amazing, but they scare me. For the first time, you simply wake up in the digital world, it's impossible to tell it apart from reality. Trust me, it's worth the ride, but I don't share Marilou's trust of technology. The chambers will be used by the finalists. Emilio did not want to come to Mars, and so this technology is not really on earth. I have no clue how he can win without entering a chamber. He will lose this year."

"I'll take that as a no. Emilio has been counted out many times. I wouldn't bet against him, many have lost money that way." Milly cared about the president.

The image of Marilyn in the background pulled out a small hand-held device and began to read values from it. "What is going on?" asked Georges. He knew this was important.

Electoral kept reading the screen of the device ignoring his words.

"What?" insisted the programmer.

– There is a change next door. –

"What? Anything wrong with them?"

– It's complicated. –

The interview ended instantly. Georges and Milly got up, and rushed to the lab next door. Marilyn simply disappeared. In the next room, the doctor was hunched over Laurent.

"What is going on?" asked Georges to his creation as he entered the lab. An image of the artificial intelligence was now pacing in the forest background, reading her little handheld computer.

"Marilou, talk to me."

“The situation of the Lapierre couple is unchanged, but Pi is shifting,” said Marilyn, busy monitoring.

"Pi, the number?"

“Yes.”

"What does that mean?" asked the journalist holding part of her dress.

“The fabric of the world is changing. The Universe is bending, twisting.”

She looked around and saw nothing. Normally Milly would be asking the follow-up questions, but Georges added, "What the hell do you mean? That's a universal constant."

“Both humans are stable, no cause for concern, but these numbers,” the image of Marilyn was concerned.

Georges turned to Milly. "When I tell you I don't understand her anymore, you see what I mean?" The journalist had to agree. Pi? Coming from anyone else, this would be a clear indication that the person was certifiable. For as long as the constant Pi had been discovered, scientists have been trying to find a secret meaning behind the endless string of numbers.

“Pi is a variable guys, not a fixed value. It’s moving faster than predicted.”