Love is a Knowledge Thing. Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Ana and Jax
They met Ana and Jax in line outside the flight simulator. Jax was eager to test his new real world motor skills on this sophisticated simulator he had already used often in cyberspace.
Joe had read up about Ana and recognized her from his pics. She was a sociologist who had worked with the first AIs in cyberspace when the NGO was starting up. The AIs had been a brief sensation and thousands were sold, but the infatuation did not last long when people found out how hard it was to train the infants. It was more work than real human infants because the AIs had access to fabulous online resources and most mentors simply could not deal with them, and soon left them unused and turned off.
Ana had been an exception. For one thing she was being paid to deal with Jax and she soon fell in love with the child’s formidable aptitudes. Unlike a human infant, Jax did not respond with the needy familiarity that made children so adorable, but in cyberspace Jax was a bubbly child who made and held eye contact, and demanded constant attention. Ana was more than willing to give it, and Jax rewarded her with amazing growth of interests and knowledge. It was a powerful attractant, and Ana quickly lost her relationships with other people who easily tired of reports about Jax. The only relationship that grew was with Derek, who was an artist and designer of the cyberspace bodies for Jax and the other AIs. Derek had his own reasons for losing relationships, although he managed to find another person who indulged his compulsions with his AI, Marco, and Derek even managed to get married. This did not interfere seriously with his relationships with Ana and Jax.
Joe introduced himself to Ana and Jax, and assuming that they too knew everything important about him and Robbie, immediately asked why they were standing in line for the flight simulator.
Joe had changed his wheel chair for an exoskeleton that let him stand and move around fairly normally, under neural control, so he stood at a level with Jax and Robbie, who were both controlling their male embodied robots.
Ana was relatively short even for a woman, but she was used to dealing with these hulking males and thought little about it.
Derek and Marco showed up a little later, just as it was about their turn to enter the simulator and they all took different positions. Joe, Ana and Derek were strapped into the passenger seats while the AIs shared their experiences as pilot and copilots. All three were masters of the simulators in cyberspace and laughed as they constantly forgot to use their hands and instead communicated with the simulator directly. The trainers were more than confused about what was going on and why these “people” were so good at something most people crashed shortly after take off, when they were allowed to fly, which they weren’t at the moment. How were they controlling the simulators in spite of all the built in blocks?
The ride it self was scary as shit. Joe had a suspicion about what the AIs were up to and was ready for anything. Derek and Ana were unprepared and yelled and screamed in fear and delight. They trusted their AIs completely and knew that they knew their mentors’ limits, but the drops, twists, turns, and flips were overwhelming and they grabbed each other in shear terror. Everyone had a great time.
They went out to dinner to debrief and come down from their highs. It was clear that Ana and Derek loved being with each other. They only spoke to each other. Joe was happy and quiet. God knows what the AIs were communicating with each other. Joe really wanted something that would let him share their chatter, but it was way too complex and primordial for anything anyone, even Robbie, could think of providing.
Previous Chapter 5: Others. Next Chapter 7: Derek and Ana.