Artificial Intelligence and Other Wishful Thoughts, Part 3

Posted on Thu 6th Sep, 2018 @ 11:59pm by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran & Elizabeth Anderson M.D.

1,956 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Oblivion
Location: Deck 1554, River Village
Timeline: MD2, 1830 hours

The cascade of the waterfall made a soothing sound as it splashed into the pond. Damion could smell the fragrant flowers and grass. "Do you come here often?" he asked, "You were mentioning time earlier. It's almost as if time slows down here. You're free of other demands and can just be."

"That's how it feels to me, too. It's the only place my mind can really slow down, almost turn off. I only discovered it within the last couple of days, but I do expect to wear a path here. Except," she smiled, "probably the materials of the area are wear resistant." She tugged him gently a little farther along and into some trees with thin branches which hung to the ground. Hidden by the branches, but with a clear view of the water, was a stone bench and she led him over to sit down. "It is far more comfortable than it looks."

"And far more private," Damion said, "at least from the path. The rest of the base feels very far away."

What did this mean, Damion wondered? He wracked his brain. Did it simply mean that Elizabeth wanted to show him a beautiful, peaceful place, just as he had once shown her a beautiful place where he found peace? Instinct told him that that was probably all it meant. But if she were any other woman he cared for this much, he'd take it as an invitation to turn to her and lightly brush his lips against hers.

Just how far did this experiment in being human go?

For an instant, Damion wished he were back home, where he knew the rules. If a woman you liked smiled at you and tilted her chin up, you kissed her. If she glared and scowled at you, you backed off--fast--and apologized. It was better, though, to know to back off before she got to the point of scowling. Only a real cad pushed that far.

He did not want to be a cad. But he wondered--What would Elizabeth do if he kissed her?

Damion decided to put off making this decision for a bit and gazed out at the water. He kept his fingers loosely entwined with Elizabeth's, though, thinking that he could meditate on the touch of their hands. "I like how the ripples in the water make ribbons of the reflections," he said. "On Earth, when sunlight hits water, the waves sparkle like Spican flame gems, only much brighter. Sometimes, it's like a path of glittering light on the surface of a pond like this, when the wind is up."

"That sounds lovely," Anderson said wistfully. "I've heard many things about different planets, but Earth seems to be very special. For one thing, it has far more species than other planets. Or is that what I mean - different kinds of people, different animals, even multitudes of plants. Is it really very different from other places, or is it the memory of so many that makes it seem that way? Can such things as beauty truly be quantified?"

The quiet and peace of the temple gardens always turned Elizabeth's thoughts inward, made her dabble in the philosophic. Perhaps that was an odd place for artificial intelligence to wander, but she didn't feel artificial in any way. Though she still had subroutines and access to the Starfleet database, she also had access to something she had begun to call herself ... her own way of looking at things, feeling things, thinking about things. Technically, perhaps all she had done was isolate a subroutine, but her judgment on that was still pending. It felt like something new and different. When early biological forms had begun to use language and symbols, had the changes felt like this?

"I would say that every planet where intelligent life naturally evolved has that same variety--skin color and skin thickness variations depending on latitude, and so forth. It's just that, in the Federation, and I suspect elsewhere, we've got so many colonies. You can only have one homeworld.

"I think Earth is special to humans because, deep down, it's home--even for someone like me, for whom it's an alien world. There's a--a rightness about Earth, a sense that you fit--because, no matter how suitable is the world you come from, on Earth there's no need for shoehorning yourself into a spot. Even on a planet like Turkana, which is a nice enough Class M world--there are no native primates. You can't look at any creature native to Turkana and say, 'We came from that,' the way you can on Earth."

Damion fell silent as a waft of air blew a scent of jasmine over them.

"You ask about beauty--I know they've done research on Earth to mathematically quantify what constitutes an attractive human face--but there's a significant element of beauty that goes beyond the quantifiable, into the spiritual. And, of course, when love enters into it, all bets are off."

Elizabeth was silent for a few heartbeats. There was the word that caused her so much trouble - love. It was something she thought she was coming to understand, a word which might describe her feelings for Damion. It was also something that was difficult to define, a concept difficult to grasp. She could hold on to a flower, she could understand the action of running. Love was different, whether thinking of it as a noun or a verb.

After a moment, she said, "But love itself seems unquantifiable, perhaps even unreasonable ... as in not reasonable, or not rational. I suppose beauty is the same. I think you are saying that beauty can be created by love, by I've also read that love can be created by beauty. It's one of those biological thoughts which gives me a headache. It's a version of which came first, the chicken or the egg, isn't it? But with the slightest shade of difference."

"I think beauty is created by love, not the other way around," Damion said. "One of my grandfathers had a strawberry mark on the side of his forehead. You would think that might have made him not terribly attractive to women, but as far as my Gran was concerned, there was no other man for her in all of Turkana City. Her face lit up whenever he walked into a room. When you love someone, it really doesn't matter what they look like; you see the beauty in them." He paused before continuing. "I think the kind of love that's created by beauty is... not real love."

Elizabeth looked at Damion, hearing something in his voice ... pain perhaps? After a moment, when it seemed he would not go on, she said, "I questioned it myself. I look out over this garden, and it is beautiful. I feel something toward it, something indefinable, maybe ... happiness? But that's not the same as love, is it? I find myself thinking about love often. I suppose because it's something I'm not completely sure of. You who are born to it learn to identify it early, I think. Trying to discover it for myself is," she looked away again, "... difficult. I don't know how to know when I have it right. That probably sounds like very muddled thinking, but it's where I wind up every time I think about it."

She smiled wryly and added, "And then I tell myself, Elizabeth, you're only an EMH, a computer which looks human, but isn't. How can you possibly understand these human emotions you keep trying to have."

Damion snickered. "Love tends to muddle most people up. Look, you may be an EMH, but you understand more about love than some human beings I've met," Damion said. "You couldn't believe in God if you didn't love, somehow, some way. I don't think you could delight in this garden--not just the beauty of it, but the peace of it--if you didn't understand love, deep down, because reverence built this little place." He paused and frowned slightly. "You might think I'm foolishly attributing human feelings to you--and maybe I am. It's just that--there are times when I think I can tell you're feeling something, and times when I think I can tell you aren't. There's the real you, and then there's the programming. I think you must be dropping some of the programming, because I haven't heard that particular little laugh you used to have in a long while. Or else you just don't laugh that way around me anymore."

"Really? Give me a few seconds," Anderson said, holding up one finger as a wait indicator, and closed her eyes. Biologicals found her open stare a little difficult to observe. Quickly, she scrolled through her memories of time with Damion, searching for laughter. He was right. Her laugh had changed. What did that mean? She set a search for her laughter, in general, to see if it was only with Damion.

Opening her eyes, she said, "I see what you mean, but I'm not sure yet what significance it has. I'll let you know when I finish analyzing it. You are also different, that much I picked out of the memories I scanned. When we first met, you had a ... hmmm, a harder edge? Yes, I think that's it. There was more hidden about you - not just hidden from me, but you kept yourself private and distanced from others, I think. I don't see you with others, so I also don't know if the change is only with me."

After another few seconds of thought, she added, "But if that is the case with both of us, and only between us, then it means we are more relaxed with each other, trust has grown, and," she hesitated briefly, deciding in a flash of a nano-second that she wasn't ready to mention the word love, "there's a growing closeness between us."

"I think there is, too, and I'm glad of it," Damion said. "And, yes, you're right. I am more relaxed around other people lately. I don't know if that's just some of Corin rubbing off on me, or what. He is a friendly bloke, without guards up. The same holds for you, too. You act much more human now. There's a warmth to you. When I first met you on Hermes, there was an innocence about you; you were more analytical, or came across that way. I'm guessing you're around other people a lot more now, just learning about them instead of needing to constantly assess their emotional state."

Damion shifted position on the bench and then glanced at Elizabeth. "And if you don't see me with other people, perhaps we ought to change that. It's just that most of the people I've met either work in the Intelligence department, or they know me as Corin."

The counseling programming took over for a moment, and she said, "That wasn't a complaint, merely an observation. Sometimes I don't want to share you, anyway. I've made friends with Jade, and I see a few other people I'm actually coming to know. The base is very different from being on the ship. There are a lot of people here who aren't my clients, and that means more chance to observe how humans interact. I guess I've been practicing how to be human," Elizabeth shrugged. "Some people relate better to those they see as being the same."

She reflected on that for a moment, smiled at him, and stood, keeping his hand in hers. "How did we get so serious? I think it must be time to find a place to eat and talk of ... sealing wax and kings? Is that right?"

 

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