brockton bay heroes, meet plant tinker

[msrewind]

Time elapses. Rewind is allowed to leave her prison- er, hospital room. She needs to go around on a wheelchair, and it'll still take at least a month for her bones to mend completely, and she needs help to move around and do stuff. But she definitely won't complain about being able to eat real food more often (she is very thankful for the bot bringing her takeout), and she can keep riding along with paramedics even when she can't really move around a lot.

And one of these days, while she's in an ambulance, something lands on it, rocking the vehicle and startling her from her thoughts. The ambulance stops, and whatever it is makes noises as if it's moving and then jumps off it. Rewind twists to see through the window, and-

"Console, a really weird leafy monkey just jumped on the ambulance and then off it," she says into her comm.

Comments

[thinkering]

"We evolved personhood in response to stimuli the bot doesn't have."

[mrglam]

"Yeah, that's what I'm saying."

[thinkering]

"So maybe my concern's unfounded, but it can sure pass a Turing test."

[mrglam]

"Which can mean pretty much anything."

[thinkering]

"What do you mean?"

[mrglam]

"Well, the Turing test was supposed to identify that an AI woke up, so yours could in fact be awake and we just don't really know it. Maybe it's more continuous than that, maybe self-awareness isn't all it's cracked up to be, et cetera. On the other hand the Turing test may just not be as good as all that at identifying personhood."

[thinkering]

"No, the test was supposed to be a more testable question than 'is it awake'."

[mrglam]

"Huh. Really? I'd thought it was something like being as intelligent as a human or something."

[thinkering]

"I mean, it gets summarized sort of like that. But it's actually a pretty narrow-domain skill test. The original formulation calls for a text channel only, even."

[mrglam]

"I wonder if I could tell a real-you from a bot-controlled copy if it were trying to fool me."

[thinkering]

"...I don't know. It does a really good me and I don't think we've ever been alone somewhere it couldn't hear. The helmet mic can pick up conversations in the house from the closet."

[mrglam]

"We should test that. It'd be fun."

[thinkering]

"If you'd find it entertaining, sure, why not."

[mrglam]

"I'm a weird person," he declares. "And yeah, testing my skills at people does sound entertaining."

[thinkering]

"Do you want to say what tells you'll be looking for or keep them secret?"

[mrglam]

He kisses her on the cheek. "I don't really know what tells I'll be looking for until I see them, I think. I mean, if I sit down for a while I could maybe come up with a list? But it wouldn't necessarily be complete or anything if there's something I didn't remember at the time."

[thinkering]

"I mean like are there specific questions you expect us to answer differently."

[mrglam]

"Right, and I mean that I don't know, I won't be interrogating both of you, I don't think interrogating you would work."

[thinkering]

"Fair enough."

[mrglam]

"It'd be more, like, talking and interacting and picking up on a number of subconscious clues that I could maybe make conscious once I noticed them but that's harder to do in advance."

[thinkering]

"Gotcha."

[mrglam]

"There's one test I'm pretty sure would work if it weren't for the squinting problem."

[thinkering]

"...What?"

[mrglam]

"This," he says, leaning forward to kiss her again.

[thinkering]

Kiss. "I don't see how that's a squinting problem thing. Obviously the test has to be conducted when you can't see me."