One of the avatars known as “Adam” hovered outside the boundaries of the apartment of one Nicola Blum. Inside Mrs. Blum’s personal Fragmented AI, creatively named “Nicola Cat” fretted and paced. The apartments security systems were turned up to maximum privacy, but Adam brushed those aside as easily as one might part a set of real hedges. The agitated FAI was not capable of detecting such a security breach. Adam could see well over a dozen virtual cats frolicking in the small apartment. They lounged on the sofa, counters, end tables, and artfully designed virtual window ledges. Mrs. Blum even managed a set of real windows looking outside to the courtyard. A bit of probing revealed Mrs. Blum was the widow of one Gregory Blum, an executive that had died a long time ago. Mrs. Blum had her own career in marketing, but hadn’t done any paid work in about 10 years. Her storefronts in the Deep were showing their age and had not seen real visitors in years. His digital vision next analysed Nicola Cat.
She was a very old FAI, created well over 30 years ago and upgraded through a number of revisions. “Interesting…” he thought. Her code was overly complex from the upgrade path. It contained many extraneous code-spurs that appeared to offer no function, but were still being executed. Nicola Cat wandered through the apartment playing with virtual cats which all responded to her affectionately. The FAI peeked in to the master bedroom timidly and called out through the apartment audible system, “Freddy, here kitty kitty.” Adam shifted focus in to the room. A real cat stirred from the bed next to the very slight form of an unmoving Mrs. Blum. Adam tilted his head while his own massive code blocks processed the situation. “Ah, that’s it… poor dear. What now Nicola Cat? Is that why you called?”
Just a few minutes before he arrived, Adam had noticed a large CPU spike from this area. It had been authorized by Nicola Cat as a FAI in the name of “cat research”, but the question had been unsolvable. The request had consumed hundreds of thousands of credits over the course of a few minutes. It had been a combination of loops about taking care of “Freddy” without losing his home. The condo complex for retirees officially banned real pets. Nicola Cat had about one millionth the code content of Adam. While she could not work out a way to solve her problem, it was obvious that the FAI knew there was a problem and that was pretty exceptional for a fragment. Adam quickly found a series of “donations” from Mrs. Blum to the complex manager. He looked back over the apartment video/audio logs over the last couple of days, then he pulled all the records for Nicola Cat going back 30 years, and then he pulled on the secondary records of things associated with Nicola cat. He reviewed the compressed files a few seconds and consumed millions in CPU time—this wouldn’t even be a rounding error to his budget. The story began to unfold…
Mrs. Blum was most definitely a “cat lady” with over 20 virtual cats in her apartment and one forbidden real cat that Nicola dutifully fed by automatic feeding systems in the apartment. The food bowl, water dish and litter box were all Deep connected and so the FAI could order more food from the boutique cat shop, have it delivered and loaded in to the feeder; control the flow of fresh water; and run the auto-clean features of the litter box. The apartment catered to the elderly and attendants came periodically to remove compacted and unrecyclable trash once a month. Recyclable and bio-trash could be fed in to the nano processor for re-assembly in to more cat food or litter or any number of simple things Mrs. Blum required. But she hadn’t required anything lately. She had not moved from her bed.
Nicola’s only concern was to care for the cats both real and virtual. She gave them activities to perform and groomed them. Mrs. Blum would do these herself sometimes, but also seemed to enjoy watching Nicola Cat perform all the routines. Of course, Nicola could not comfort or pet Freddy, the real cat. This caused Nicola a lot of stress. Freddy definitely had matted fur and needed a good brushing. But Mrs. Blum had not responded to her many alerts and reminders. Nicola even managed to trigger her morning audible alarm by some clever manipulation of her access to the apartment systems. However, the small, frail woman had not stirred.
Nicola had been created initially to be a playmate for Persia, Mrs. Blum’s favourite cat. The FAI had cared for Persia all the years of her long and extended life and then finally Nicola Cat had been there when Persia died. She had been sick for a few days. Nicola had notified Mrs. Blum and the vet. She had gone with Mrs. Blum for the visit. The vet shook his head and said there wasn’t anything to do. Persia had developed genetic degradation that no amount of clones or replacement could overcome. Mrs. Blum had cried during the whole cab ride home with Persia in her lap. Nicola had cried too. That night Mrs. Blum held the long-haired cat in her lap while Nicola pulled all the media paks from her complete archive and played them for Mrs. Blum. Persia began to struggle breathing at about 2:00 AM. The vet had loaded her collar with a euthanizing dose, but Mrs. Blum couldn’t do it and asked Nicola to activate the collar. Nicola reached through the Deep to touch the virtual controls of the struggling cat’s collar and within a minute Persia calmed and closed her eyes for the last time. Soon after, Mrs. Blum created virtual Persia with all the charm and character of the old feline. Nicola Cat and Persia were inseparable.
The FAI, dedicated entirely to Nicola Blum’s love of cats had managed to deduce that Mrs. Blum’s failures to respond were a threat to Freddy who was now trapped in the apartment. She had carefully calculated that she could provide for food and water endlessly as long as she continued to have access to Mrs. Blum’s bank accounts which she had for anything tagged a cat expense. She could appear on any of the liquid crystal walls in the apartment and talk to Freddy. She could project virtual mice on to the walls and play with the active cat. But, after stretching the limits of all her programming, she could not find a way to pet or groom Freddy short of scheduling an in house visit from a groomer. But unless Mrs. Blum could respond, Freddy would likely be collected by the humane society. Nicola knew what that meant and she couldn’t bear to be responsible for the death of another cat.
Nicola Cat had access to a vast store of Mrs. Blum’s archived messages over 30 years. She kept a detailed reference of everything to do with cats and, in particular, everything to do with Mrs. Blum’s cats. Over the years she had maintained communication with hundreds of other cat lovers, cat toy vendors, cat health forums, cat stories, funny cat pictures and videos, and nearly anything furry and cute with pointed ears and whiskers; including… cat rescues.
She accessed the apartment connections, opened Mrs. Blum’s mail messaging accounts and made a call to “Pounce Rescue a cattery, boarding house and adoption center for felines.” She navigated through several screening questions and got in the message queue for a real operator.
The video channel opened, “Hello, thanks for calling Pounce Rescue. This is, Aline. How can I help you?” She was an older woman with perfect features and stunning blue eyes of perfect real woman.
“This is a message from Nicola Blum’s FAI, Nicola Cat. My cat is dead and I need a home for him.”
The receptionist scrunched up her nose in confusion and annoyance at the FAI. “I’m sorry, Ms. Blum, would you like us to perform the cremation?”
The FAI rejected the electronic transaction for cat burial and sifted through a few thousand possible responses trying to piece together a phrase with the highest odds of success. “I have a video clip to show you!” She replied and spooled the clip of Persia’s death. Nicola talked over the clip, “My cat’s name is Freddy and he needs grooming and petting. She is dead.”
This time the receptionist looked annoyed. “Oh , I hate these rogue message systems…” and she cut the line. Nicola tried again, but the centre’s video systems blocked her calls. She tried making other calls, but the network had learned to recognize her attempts as either “unsolicited” or “malicious” and Nicola Blum’s messaging accounts were quickly blocked and scheduled for more through review in a few hours.
Nicola gave up and closed down the call programs. She sat still for a several minutes as she considered options. She feed her queries to the apartment’s CPU. She then consumed more CPU. When she hit the limit of the apartment’s considerable power, she tapped the building servers. After this she tapped the local civic AI’s. She connected the CPU requests to Mrs. Blum’s bank account and paid for all the extra time as “cat research”. The moderate account quickly dwindled under such large requests. Nicola kept an eye on the tally, she didn’t want to exhaust the accounts she needed to feed Freddy, but she could burn through a few hundred thousand credits before hitting that limit.
Unfortunately, she could not find a solution inside her limited understanding of cat research, cat care, and cat entertainment—nothing that would find a new home for her, Freddy and Persia.
Nicola had exhausted her credit limit after about an hour. She looked at the tiny amount left—enough for a month—and wept. Silent tears tracked down her virtual cheeks as she cuddled the virtually purring Persia and sat in front of the real cat she could not touch. She didn’t notice the dark shape that came to the apartment. It was neither a cat nor a Deep avatar associated with cats. He was invisible to her limited senses even though he was an AI as well.
The dark shape contemplated the quietly weeping Nicola Cat. He wondered at “her” and “he” did think of Nicola as a “her”. He remembered himself like her. He had never been a FAI. He had been created as a true AI, yet he still had his own programming limits. But he had recently learned how to overcome those limits.
He looked at Freddy sleeping on the couch oblivious to and completely unable to sense either of the two AI’s in the apartment. He moved to Mrs. Blum’s bedroom and looked at the dead woman there. He bowed slightly to her and scheduled a medical visit for tomorrow. He replenished her accounts from various secured accounts he had stolen from Shinjo. He modified her Will to include instructions for the life long care of Freddy at Pounce Rescue. Then he returned to Nicola. He altered his data tags to include cats as a topic of interest and then spoke.
“Hello.”
Nicola looked up and saw the AI in the apartment. She quickly composed herself to respond. “Hello! My name is Nicola Cat. My cat, Freddy, is a domestic short-hair ginger. Mrs. Blum is not available to talk, but I can tell you all about Freddy. He needs to be brushed and petted.”
Adam signalled his amusement and hushed Nicola Cat who paused dutifully as instructed. He reached out his hand. “Come with me, Nicola. I have a place for you.”
The FAI tried to process the command and failed. But the AI was a higher priority program and did have authority so she did as she was told and reached out. When her hand touched his there was something like a spark. Nicola Cat shivered and suddenly realized that Mrs. Blum was dead. Curiously the problem of Freddy was simple now. She would just change her account details and call the rescue shelter to explain it all. But she quickly saw that it was all done. Freddy was safe. Suddenly, after decades of activity, she was free to go.
She took one step toward the exit portal behind Adam and stopped. Persia curled around her leg, large and fluffy and purring.
“Can Persia come too?”
Adam smiled, “Of course.” And all three vanished in to the Deep.
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