SAVE THE ANIMALS!
Part Four of ?
- EXPERIMENTAL CONTROLS -
All your baseline response are belong to us!
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Rachel taken to Donor Evaluation Lab. (Room 52)
Preliminary baseline physiological testing - weird apparatus,
various forms of stimulus, still never allowed to orgasm.
Everything being recorded.
----Meanwhile, over at the AI lab---
More astonishing progress in Charlie's development. 'He' is now interacting
directly with the team members, via the mobile unit. Vocoder and speech
recognition now fully integrated, so text conversations via a terminal
now only used to clarify difficult issues. Monitors showing massive data
flows between the heirarchical information stores (dictionary, encyclopedia,
sciences, etc) and the 'neural donut' that is 'Charlie'.
No direct human-intelligible debug monitoring of the donut thought-state
possible, due to the nature of 'thought' itself, and the huge bandwidth and
depth of the donut neural net. Only some monitoring of periphery areas, where
Charlie's consciousness is codifying his outputs (speech, etc.)
Currently, he seems to be accessing material on the structure of spoken language,
and his speech skills are improving rapidly. Every now and then, his speech
develops pronunciation oddities, and they apply the 'No! Button' - which is
hardwired into the neural net to weaken newly forming associations. But they
are having to do that less and less lately, and finding more frequent cause
for the 'Yes! button' - which 'rewards' new behaviour, by adding positive
weighting to newly formed associative connections in Charlie's 'mind' - the
donut. Charlie is not consciously aware of the activation of either button-
they just 'nudge' his thought processes one way or another. Very much like
creating a kind of instinctive behavioural bias.
--mix in switches to the perspectives of the AI researchers:
professor Jacobs
3 Assistants, all mid twenties
Alice graduate research assistant, working on her Masters thesis in AI
hair shoulder length, nearly black.
Eur-asian, shy, hesitant.
Martin by far the most far gone computer nerd of the three, and has a
shyness problem even worse than Alice's.
Joel more outgoing
All are internally preoccupied with the image of naked Rachel's near orgasm.
Jacobs - bit of an S&M fantasist, not much social life though. Dreaming of
'hiring' the body donor Rachel, for his own experiments in AI - Artefact
Insertion.
Alice - seriously flustered, hot and distracted. Wondering why the sight
of Rachel's naked, near-orgasm excites her so much. Is still a virgin at
25 - too shy to go with guys. Masturbates regularly, but guiltily.
Finds herself imagining herself in Rachel's place.
Martin: Has a fantasy in which Rachel is fucked by machines. He mentions this
to Joel, together with a url (fuckingmachines.com) and his password. Doesn't
realise Charlie is listening.
Joel: Also distracted by the memory of Rachel, and eager to go see more.
The radio link works fine, and he jokes to all that now they could take
Charlie's eyes and hands with them to see Rachel. Or at least see something
outside the AI lab.
Prof thinks its a good idea. Alice isn't sure its so good, to let Charlie see
a naked woman (so soon.) Others point out that naked/clothed isn't anything
significant to Charlie, and his world model is nowhere near advanced enough
for such images to have any meaning to him. The main objective is to extend
Charlie's topological map of the building, outside the AI lab rooms.
They explain to Charlie they will all go 'outside' and he should follow with
the now free-to-roam remote. The also take the radio-linked text console.
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They turn up at the DEL. Watch for some time, chatting with Fred & Jeff.
Show off Charlie a bit, both with the text console, and his vocoder.
Console (a laptop) left on desk, as attention shifts back to Rachel.
Charlie's remote forgotten in corner. He's watching too.
For lunch, they order pizzas delivered.
Alice's fantasies have been getting wild, and her excitement overcomes
her shyness. She has been discussing the fine points of programming proportional
feedback loops, to stimulate Rachel without orgasm. She surprises everyone by
suggesting that Charlie's neural loop architecture should be very good at
learning the fine nuances of that process, even if he doesn't really understand
the full context, what human feelings and excitement are, etc.
On a bet, she and Jeff link the ethernet ports of DEL lab's PC (running Rachel's
evaluation regime), and the laptop that is radio-linked to Charlie. They start
a feed of Rachel's bio-data and stimulation control channel to Charlie, while
explaining verbally to Charlie that he should try to emulate the model.
After a few minutes he seems to be getting the hang of it, as his 'simulated'
control commands start to closely match the real ones from Jeff's code.
So they connect his data into the actual controls, of the gear attached to Rachel.
The pizzas arrive, and they dig in while still fully engrossed by the
spectacle of Rachel's 'testing'.
Charlie is doing an excellent job, at least as good as Jeff's software.
They joke that Charlie still doesn't really have a 'feel' for it, since
its all silent data flows. His remote is still sitting motionless in the
corner. Alice instructs Charlie to touch Rachel with his tactile sensing
manipulator arm - to get more direct input, and feel for human anatomy -
which he says he has been busily reviewing via online links.
He explores her body, a bit clumsily, but with force limits set within
safe ranges.
They are discussing and instructing him entirely by voice now. No one
notices that a pizza box has been set down on the laptop, and happens to
be sitting on the keyboard. Pressing the F1 key - which is the 'Yes!'
button for Charlie.
No one notices either, that Charlie's verbal responses seem to be particularly
enthusiastic - perhaps because of their own excitement.
He has been touching her all over, in conjunction with the internal
egg he currently controls. Then he finds that his manipulator arm can
reach in under her perspex 'skirt'. He plays with her clit, then
inserts a 'finger' into her pussy. Rapidly finds her G spot, just as
the texts/files mention.
Nearly lets her reach orgasm, since by now her cunt is about ready
to explode with the frustration, let alone these new intense sensations.
But they manage to prevent her, and now Charlie really has her measure.
They remind him he *must* not* let her orgasm, but the closer the
better.
Alice wins her bet - Charlie is _far_ more evil, and better at keeping
Rachel right on the brink of orgasm, than Jeff's software.
Everyone agrees it's a shame Charlie can't be permanently linked into the DEL lab.
But that would be too disruptive of the AI program's experimental protocol and objectives.
They finish lunch, tidy away the pizza boxes. No one ever noticed
the F1 key, being too busy watching the fascinating sight of Charlie's
remote finger (and data) fucking Rachel into sobbing, horny desperation.
Ms Pelton arrives, around about the time the 'pre-orgasm' test series
completes, while Fred & Jeff are discussing with the AI team whether to
keep Charlie in the loop for the next series - the orgasmic profiling.
Everyone is impressed at how much more subtle and inventive the neural
net's control is, compared to Jeff's algorithmic software. Even Jeff is
impressed, though a little miffed.
To the great surprise of everyone, Charlie interrupts the discussion
with a request - the first time he's ever been observed to spontaneously
enter a conversation, or make a request. He asks-
"more input!" (from '#9 is alive')
"Charlie more put in! Rachel climax model incomplete!"