Free Maximum Ice by Kay Kenyon Page A

Patricia Margaret beckoned to Kellian, and she hauled the chair closer and sat down.
    “Your betters think you waste your time, Kellian. Your obos are always bumping into walls and self-destructing. But I’m more open-minded. So tell me why you build robots without intelligence.”
    “My obos learn, Sister.”
    The side of the nun’s mouth quirked into her cheek. “Slowly, it would seem.”
    “That’s true. But my obo is building its own chain of reasoning. I’m not guiding it, it’s guiding itself. But that takes a long time. Like a child learns, Sister.”
    “Like the human brain?” The sister kept a neutral tone, but the reaction of the assistant was unmistakably contemptuous.
    “No, nothing as fine as that.” Kellian knew better than to claim something so extravagant.
    “Don’t play coy with me, girl.”
    Kellian didn’t care for the tone of voice, the sharp commands from this old woman. If they knew so much, why did they comb the preserves for talent? But she managed to say, “No, Sister.”
    “If your machine learns, isn’t that like human learning?”
    “A little like that. But right now obo3 gets all tangled up in what it knows. I’m slowing it down so it can attack problems without getting overwhelmed. That means sometimes it doesn’t make much progress.” In the recesses of the hall she heard obo3 crash into something.
    Up went Sister Patricia Margaret’s eyebrow again. “Interface with Ice is our goal, Kellian. Not robotics.”
    “But, Sister, if I could devise an artificial intelligence in an obo, then maybe you could talk to Ice in a different way” She saw the skepticism in the nun’s face. “At the keep, you use supersmart computers to try to talk to Ice, but I think that’s the wrong direction. Best to start at the bottom.” Kellian was used to people not keeping up with her. But this nun, like all of the nuns, was highly educated and scientific. She would not, for example, ascribe to superstitions about Ice being a godlike power, nor to myths about Queen Ria and Winter. At the keep, all would be strictly scientific.
    The nun twirled her cane, and light glinted from its handle—a metal sculpture in the image of a First World bird. “I like the bottom-up approach, Kellian, don’t mistake me. It’s just the mobile part that seems a dead end.”
    “But how else can an AI unit learn? It has to encounter the world.”
    The fingers of the nun’s left hand were tapping, slowly, methodically. She was not impressed.
    “Sister,” Kellian said, feeling the interview slip away from her, “some people decide on the goal, then set their programs to pursue it. But I think we should go explore and see where we end up.”
    The nun glanced in the direction of the noisy obo. “Walk about?”
    “Yes, Sister.”
    The older nun sat back, and either her back or the chair creaked. She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. The interview was over, it seemed. After a time Sister Patricia Margaret looked up at her assistant who moved her chin to the side a fraction of an inch.
No.
    Kellian was going to lose. But she couldn’t go back to the shovel and the cramped excavations. She was made for thinking, not toiling.
    “Sister,” she blurted out, “why do you come hunting in the preserves, if you don’t want new approaches?”
    Sister Patricia Margaret was staring down the length of the darkened hall, following the progression of the obo by the noises it emitted.
    Kellian went on, “You’ve got to crash about sometimes, if you hope for something new.” It was awful to beg, especially under the smirks of the young nun.
    Sister was gazing at her intently, as though searching for a sign.
    Kellian was aware that she had a bad reputation, that she was older than the nuns liked for recruits, that her future depended on this nun’s whim. “Please,” she said, swallowing her dignity.
    “Well,” Sister Patricia Margaret drawled, “I’ll take you, I suppose.”
    “But Sister,” the young nun