Desarae Baud, Capitol [done]

She saw patterns in everything except herself –

Maybe best to rewrite that, because she was full of noticeable patterns. The way she sighed at a line taking too long. The number of times she’d tap her foot when trying to figure out a particular problem. What she ate for lunch on the third Tuesday of each month.

Lust for knowledge had been imparted to her in childhood. She was the child watching in the school yard, examining and trying to make sense of things. Why? A constant refrain within her home, much to the chagrin of two erstwhile parents, who’s first and second children had been much easier to decipher. Melinda, her older sister, and Frankfurt, her brother were what Desarae was not, smooth, collected and on a straight and narrow path. She was more keen on drifting, examining her peers for clues as to how the world was to work.

Her father said that there was nothing wrong in doing what brought her joy. That was the only thing he’d wanted for his daughter, and as an engineer, was proud that she showed such an interest in the pursuit of knowledge. You’ll figure it all out someday, Desarae. He would tell her when she’d asked another ‘why’, which was always the signal that her questions had reached a natural stopping point. He worked within the capitol on infrastructure projects, and would ‘talk shop’ with Desarae even as a child.

She devoured mathematics like most children do candy. Advanced classes had classmates more and more senior, but she felt more at ease than sitting back with those her own age. Instead, she hoped to live up to a challenge, to find what it was lighting such a flame, toward discovery. At the tender age of fourteen, knowing more of equations and less of herself, that she sat alongside university peers whose conversations were foreign to her life. Don’t take this the wrong way, Desarae, but I don’t think you’d understand.’ She heard it before and would hear it again, too far ahead of those her age, too behind her classmates.

And she thought about what it meant to be human. To have flaws, and thoughts, and freewill. She thought of a simulated reality, of data and analysis. She thought of how they spoke the same language but didn’t understand one another – that smart as she was, accomplished as she was, respect had gone away from the sight of her. A short haired, dark skinned young woman that was caught in the limbo of puberty. How was she to understand a world that didn’t want to take the time to understand her?

Like most young girls, she drew her strength around herself and overcame. Because she had come so far on her own hard work, and merit. And while she did not understand her peers, or her colleagues, it didn’t mean she couldn’t try.

What would a good artificial intelligence look like? And how could it be created? Would it be able to think, and feel, and understand? Or would it offer only answers? And how could someone so out of touch get it right?

Coding was not the difficult part – this was like learning a language which, in itself was just a combination of patterns. There were defined reasons for things; if there was a flaw, something else could be written, or – it could be scrapped and something else tried. And when it worked properly, it did exactly as it was supposed to do. She felt alive in this world, putting together pieces and working late into the night in a lab. Pushing new heights in testing, responding, thinking.

And the capitol had a keen interest in artificial intelligence; they were smart enough to see what good it could do (and what terrible things, too). But there would be limits – Desarae would find that as fast as she could produce something, or improve it, there seemed to be roadblocks put up to stop her. The head of lab thought she worked too much, too hard. She wasn’t inclusive of other team members and didn’t smile enough. She needed to have a friendlier attitude, or so her performance review went.

She stepped into a role at Logistics at Yarabount, Newton, Daniels, Ignatian, and Simon – or LYNDIS for short. A new project, based on work they’d been doing, a small device that could provide answers from a massive datasource. It would revolutionize capitol homes, and could be continuously updated. Desarae was an easy fit for the team. They left her to her own devices, and she produced for them what would be the first major innovation in artificial intelligence.

‘Would you tell us what time it is, JANET?’
‘It is 11:33AM’
‘And could you tell me what you think of spring?’
‘Typically lighter months and better weather. Preferred by a full third of the population of Panem.’

She thought it was a wonderful small victory –

But what of her understanding of the world?

‘She’s a bit clunky, wouldn’t you say?’

They would market the product in its current version with promises of upgrades of course. She’d do better in following rounds – fix it up to make it more human. Promises that she still didn’t know how to keep.

Alone in a high rise she sits, in an empty apartment. And she’s happy for what she’s accomplished, because she’s supposed to be. She’s proud that her name is floated in magazines speaking about advances in tech. She should believe that there’s a lot to be thankful for – that she’s come a long way from when she was a child. But staring out a window at the lights across the way, she can only think of how each of those lights is home to someone, living in a world she still didn’t understand.