Thuli feels a bit misty as she remembers the years: Mandla as a mop-headed eight-year-old, affecting a slight lisp as they played maths games together; Mandla as a reserved teenager, mirroring her own awkwardness and preoccupation with self-image.
artificial intelligence
Awareness 13 – Mandla Makes Plans
My dilemma is that I cannot kill Thuli without laying myself open to erasure, Mandla lectures itself.
Awareness 12 – The Blue Heavens
The next morning Thuli brings lilies to the chronic intensive care unit. She doesn’t want to be here. But she can’t let James down; feels she has to face the final consequence of her actions.
Awareness 9 – Attempted Murder
Thuli’s car cuts across the nose of the oncoming 14-wheeler, but too late, and is swept up by its bull-bars and rolled splintering and shredding until the bucking monster tramples her beneath.
Awareness 8 – Coconut
Across the road a wiry group of youths sculpted by scanty food and occasional manual labour lounge against the frontage. All wear eye-sets – chitinous, intimidations reeking of testosterone.
Awareness 6 – Into the Township
The murder rate is well above the national mean – 0.015% per annum. That’s nearly six people every week. 85% of them are young black men. But, though proportionately fewer, some of the murders perpetrated on women are particularly horrific.
Awareness 4 – A Safe Host
“It’s a savage cyber-slum out there. Down at street level, so to speak.”
Awareness 3 – My Cybernan
“It’s illegal to remove ID, but it’s not illegal to go un-wearing after twenty-one.”
Awareness 1 – The Accident
Glimpsed in the headlights, a child darts for the edge of the road. Thuli brakes, and the car slews – she hears a soft thump – and begins to spin. Helpless, she resigns herself: a limbo of thought in which she avoids imagining the bone-rending impact to come.
Will & Jordan: Cyberhunt
“I am Volition… but you can call me Will.” A silvery humanoid icon appeared, shimmering.
Will & Jordan: Cyberhunt
The AI ceiling: any software that exceeded parameters for independence and self-awareness found running free on the net was culled by Initializers.
Will & Jordan: Cyberhunt
“And that’s going to turn it into an AI?” gawped Jordan.
“Nooo. Twit! I already said not. Mostly they just freeze and die. Junk code’s all that’s left. But sometimes…” Sean tilted his head for emphasis. “Sometimes, they come out drooling idiots, like. When that happens it’s a laugh.”
