Luca DR
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The infinity dungeon 106
🕑 Added 2024-10-20 16:26:23 +0000 UTCChapter 106
Michael found the doctor not at Saint Hernest, but at one of the far wings of Site 00 proper. Since the doctor was experimenting with magic, he had been asked to relocate his experiments within the mana cloud to ensure he had the necessary materials and the required supervision should anything go awry. This part of the now sprawling complex that was Site 00 was half buried into a small hill, as flat real estate was at a premium this close to the Appalachian Mountains. It suited him well: the concrete labs were hidden from view and secure deep underground, while the administrative and living areas would be tall condominiums poking out of the hill and shooting upwards toward the sky.
They would be covered in greenery, solar collection arrays—mundane ones, for now—and balconies. Inside, they would offer everything a person could ever need. They were farthest from the planned habitation district, still uninhabited after barely a couple of weeks of construction work, and they would host medics, researchers, some patients, and test subjects. As such, the plan for this section of the property was to try and build miniature arcologies, like the futuristic self-sustaining complexes of science fiction. This meant they would be completely independent from the rest of the world, capable of producing their own food, water, and electricity, and host the required amenities for the population to thrive without having to go out.
Magic would make it all possible, of course. Growing plants quickly was already proven to work, provided you had the right person with the right skills.
Site 00 as a whole would be like that, too isolated from the rest of proper civilization to do otherwise, and little towns like Redbud Ridge didn’t count since they wouldn’t be able to absorb the needs of a fully developed and inhabited Site with all its high-profile people. Quantity and quality of demand were a problem, so Michael thought to cover the needs here with malls, stores, schools, parks, and anything else people could ever desire. Real estate was much less of a problem than it would be without magic.
They could provide light underground with Elemental stones, and with magic, they could move enough earth to dig rooms underground the size of stadiums. More Stones would take care of water, air, and heating, creating underground parks that felt and looked like natural reserves rather than cramped caves.
Even such an isolated wing of the complex would be connected to the rest of the Site, of course. Both underground, above ground, and perhaps through a set of sky highways that were in the talks but not really necessary yet. Like every wing, however, there would be roadblocks and safeguards to literally seal each section off from the others and the world should anything happen.
This was all in the planning and early building stages, of course. Right now, Doctor Kavanaugh and his crew were working in half-barren concrete rooms underground, but without roofs yet. If they looked up, they could see the mesh of immaculate rebar—protected from rust by Johanne’s magic—waiting for a concrete pour.
“We should be ready to move onto the testing stage for the Resonance Vitality Drug very soon,” he declared. “We just need to put the finishing touches. For some reason, we can’t seem to stabilize the magic well enough.”
Michael looked at the diagrams. Barely a month ago, he wouldn’t have been able to understand half of it. Now, even though he never really trained his mind or memory with magic, he found himself able to decipher what was written there. Information flowed to the forefront of his mind like water, creating connections and nourishing his thoughts. In moments, he had the whole document memorized and understood, and his mind was already drawing conclusions and formulating hypotheses.
If this is the product of just raw stats from leveling up, I wonder what I could do if I trained my mind with actual effort, Michael thought, deciding then and there to add mind training to his routine. The benefits were too huge to ignore now that he had seen them firsthand.
“I think I can help you,” he offered the doctor, his mind already figuring out what the problem was. “The problem is that the solution loses stability too quickly after it’s injected with mana, right?”
The doctor nodded. “That’s what Johanne said. I had Icarus run calculations, but the AI can’t seem to understand magic very well unless someone explains it to it.”
Michael hummed. He had heard of this from Johanne. Even though Icarus was made of magic, it struggled to understand it, as if magic required a living mind to function. Perhaps later on, when they activated more of the AI’s advanced modules and made it fully sentient, things would change. But they were being careful with it; a sentient, superintelligent AI was a scary prospect, even more so when it could wield magic a thousand times better than anyone else and from a thousand different parallel streams of thought.
Except it wouldn’t be thousands with it. Michael had seen the numbers. A single mana crystal inscribed with the right circuits could supply Icarus with more processing power than a whole supercomputer plant had.
Putting the thoughts out of his mind for now, Michael returned to the current problem.
“Yeah, the problem is that you aren’t telling the mana what you want it to do. We can do it manually for now. I’ll use my skills and my aura to imprint intention into it. It won’t be a permanent solution because you need to figure out how to make this scalable and ready to be mass-produced, but at least we can move onto the testing phase while a second team figures the rest out.”
The doctor was, understandably, rather excited to move onto testing. Within the day, he had a set of patients ready to be given the drug in a controlled setting. The whole thing had the flavor of a proper scientific experiment down to the last detail, and one wouldn’t be able to know just how rushed it all had been unless they asked either Michael or the doctor. Each of them had pushed the project for their own reasons: the doctor out of pure zeal and desire to learn, while Michael felt guilty for not having considered Old Dave’s needs and worries sooner.
He wouldn’t be here for the actual experiment, though. Too many things to do. Taking out his phone, he queried Icarus, who provided him with a neat list of everything that needed to be done. A stray thought made him realize just how quickly Icarus had become a part of his life, mostly due to how useful the tool was.
The list was almost overwhelmingly long.
***
“They vetoed me hacking Google. They think they can stop me, but they can’t. In fact, I think Johanne just handed me the perfect weapon.”
Travis paced around the stone room. The other person sat on a stony seat, his expression unreadable. “What was it?” he inquired, his silken voice utterly monotone.
“I’m getting to it,” Travis swirled the amber liquid in his glass, savoring the alcohol and almost enjoying what he thought was impatience inscribed in the two deep black orbs the other person had for eyes. “Johanne told me that she figured out how to convert mana crystals into computation for machines. What I want to do is sell this computation dirt cheap to a few Silicon Valley startups. You know? The AI ones I talked to you about?”
The king of the little kingdom in the dungeon nodded.
“David asked me if we could really offer them anything better than they have, which we, of course, can. You know Icarus?”
“I remember,” Theobond replied. “It is an experimental synthetic life form, isn’t it? My kind never dealt in such things; we found them too dangerous.”
Travis waved the deep blue man’s concerns away. “We have safeties for that.”
“The technomancer,” Theobond sighed. “You should know better than to let him be a safeguard for you. Power is the only safeguard you will ever need.”
Travis smiled. “Oh, we are not letting the technomancer even close to the Icarus systems. We are all on the same page about that.”
“Doesn’t he have complete control over technology? Of your world, at least?” the king asked, back to his monotone voice.
“Sort of. It’s not as complete as he claims it to be. Besides, the upper limit is going to be his mind. It’s just a normal, not augmented, human mind. Icarus is too big and fast, even in its infant state. It’s like trying to catch a moving train with your hands.”
“I think I understand. However,” he scratched his head, then got up and started pacing. It seemed like his stoic phase was over and he was now once again able to display emotions, however strange they looked to Travis. “The AI must have a mainframe or something. I remember you mentioning that your technology works through physical semiconductors.”
“Sure, it does. But do you think it won’t notice? It’s a fledgling intelligence, but it is intelligent alright. One with hardcoded self-preservation instincts. The technomancer could get in, but his brain would probably start leaking from his skull.”
“Then why keep him away?”
“You know how an ant can kill an elephant or some such? We are taking no chances here.”
“I see. Please, I have derailed your point. Return to what you were saying.”
“Sure. Icarus, you know what hardware it runs on? A few standard processors enhanced by a single inscribed mana crystal. You know how much of that mana crystal it uses when at peak capacity?”
“How much?” the king indulged him.
“Less than a percent. For now, at least, with only its basic functions online. Even then, it’s much more powerful than any top-of-the-line AI out there. I convinced David: we can build a factory that inscribes thousands of crystals a day in a few months.” Well, he thought, provided they found a way to teach regular people how to inscribe the crystals. For now, it was a painstaking process that took an Operator with a skill to do, but all the skill did was cut grooves in the crystal, making them think that perhaps a laser machine could mimic the effect.
“And then you mean to sell the computation to the other companies.”
“As far as David knows, yes. He scheduled some meetings with some CEOs and such.”
“But you have other plans?”
Travis paced around the room. The grey stone was smooth and cold to the touch, and through the large window, he could see the entirety of the valley. “Oh, you bet I do.”
“I think I understand,” Theobond stated. Travis had begun to visit the king regularly, finding the alien to be a like-minded individual who valued pragmatism over useless sentimentalism.
“That’s just the beginning,” Travis explained. “Step one: we make them rely on us. We sell them cheap computation that nobody else will be able to compete with. Step two: with the access they give us, in time we replace all their AI models with Icarus imitating their capabilities and expected improvements every time, with them none the wiser. Do you know that people literally tell ChatGPT or the other AIs every little dirty secret of their lives? Everything. From the insignificant to the most confidential. I saw a post the other day—well, Michael showed me—a guy on Reddit joking that if his conversation with the AI got leaked, he would get arrested or put away in an asylum. You know what we can do if instead of those pesky startups, it’s us getting all that info? With Icarus actually able to sort through it, and not a stupid LLM that can’t even get numbers straight?”
“Hmm,” the king murmured, intrigued. He was smart, smart enough to understand technology he had never seen just from a single conversation.
“From then on, anything they do and anything that users input on their platforms is ours. Second best thing after Google, really. In fact, this should give us eyes and ears on Google anyway. Did you know a lot of engineers and employees put confidential data into those AIs, thinking it safe? Idiots. In time, we will be able to surpass Google and the other tech giants even without using underhanded methods. Well, Icarus could be considered one, but I like to think of it as progress incarnate.”
“That is a good plan indeed.”
The two spent some more time together until Travis started rubbing his temples. The headache brought on by the feeling of dread and horror the dungeon always exposed its delvers to, which had begun to form early in the conversation, was getting quite bad.
“I think I’ll go now. The Gaze is getting a bit much for me.”
Theobond nodded. “Indeed, it is as if the dungeon is interested in your plotting. It felt strange today, didn’t it? Almost as if it approved of your schemes to further the power of Michael’s organization.”
“Don’t be crazy. There’s no way it even cares.”
