Second part of Insyrosept, in which we are introduced to more of the crew in the run up to the space ship's launch, enjoy :D
Part 2
The crew of the Insyrosept spent ten real-time weeks running on the Oxbridge computing cluster. During this time they experienced one week of subjective time. Even with the world’s fourth most powerful supercomputer it was impossible to run a simulated mind faster than this. Not needing to sleep saved them some time but the classic slow-sim problem left them out of step with the outside world.
The week of experienced time was run mostly to make sure the crew had adapted to their new existence. There were tests to be made on how well a simulated mind could interact with the spacecraft’s system. With the proper assistant programs, a human mind at a tenth normal speed could handle orchestrating the entire spacecraft’s systems. In theory at least.
Practically however, Ivonne was finding that the emergency drills were much more difficult to deal with when everything could go wrong ten times as fast. Even though she had helped design them she complained to Kim that the sub programs he had provided were useless for the task at hand.
“Did you fiddle with their workings while my back was turned?” she angrily said to him as they viewed the grim results of another containment breach simulation.
“They're so twitchy it’s like picking up a grain of sand with a toothpick!”
“I can turn down the feedback sensitivity on the locomotion,” Kim replied. “but I think we're really going to have to add another layer of automation to the reactor controls.”
“We both know that would never work, I've never seen a meltdown go down in the same way twice.”
“Well if you help me with the agent settings-”
They continued like this for several more minutes, each one tired of the string of failed simulation runs. Fusion torch drives were marvellous pieces of technology but required quick, decisive action to stop a breach of the reactor from destroying the entire vessel. Ivonne had been piloting experimental space craft for years and was renowned for her ability to judge when a fusion drive was about to go critical. The debate they were having was mostly to protect her ego, both knew that there wasn't any way to get around their slowed down reaction times.
“Fine then, have it your way,” Ivonne relented, “try distilling a lifetime of experience into just a few lines of code. If it messes up in even one test I want it scrapped.”
“Of course. So, the same tests tomorrow?”
“That long? You take too long to code these things Kim. Isn't there anyone else you could ask for help?”
“Well James is no good, too busy trying to cram the 'sum total of human knowledge' into the ship’s memory. I'd ask Claire but she's never outside her quarters.”
“Oh yeah, our resident computer genius. Think she could come up with a way to make us run faster?”
“Hey, be nice to her ok?” Kim replied as he exited the simulation space. “She seems awfully young to be on a trip like this and mock hero worship won't help.”
*
Claire Sinclair had been holed-up in her quarters for most of the crew's simulated existence. It was not a case of her being work-shy. The ship’s Doctor had been in constant correspondence with her as she reviewed the minutia of the crew's simulated body readouts. Claire felt very out of her depth discussing deviations of neuromuscular response with someone who had so much real world experience. Her research had always been about the mental side of simulated human experience.
Sally, the ship’s psychiatrist, had been less stressful to talk with. Her queries were more about mental states the crew might experience. Claire had to be careful not to let too much computing jargon slip into her replies. Sally had not approved of her suggestion of rebooting from a backup mental state in the case of a crew member’s mental breakdown.
Tonight she had some free time as her meeting with the captain and the ship’s pilot had ended early. Both had been brief in asking about the potential simulation capacity of the spacecraft whilst in flight. The captain had seemed happy with her explanation of the number of minds supported at once being inversely proportional up to normal limits. He was nice, Clark the captain. The other man Lewis made her nervous with his stony expression.
Claire was reclining in the soft lighting of her quarters, absent-mindedly manipulating the neural net hovering in the space above her. She had been meticulous in laying out her furniture in the same manner as she had back at her office at Oxbridge Computing department. An neat ordering of desks and terminals that she had refined over years of work. Other than the furniture the space of her quarters appeared empty with no visible walls or floor. She floated in the centre of her sphere of displays and holographic projections in a simulacrum of zero-gravity. Ever since she had visited low orbit Claire had longed to escape the Earth's gravity. Her simulated body might not have the dull joint aches her organic body had but the subconscious desire was still there.
As she was panning around a particular fractal network design, there came a knock at the door. Or rather the sensation of what a knock would sound like if there was a door into her personal space. One promptly appeared hanging in the blackness, beyond Claire's circle of light. As the knocking came again, this time from the newly instantiated wooden door Claire connected to a visualisation of the corridor outside. The person standing there was a crew member she had seen at the initial group meeting but had not had any contact with since. According to the crew manifest she was Ivonne Blaskowicz; head of engineering.
“Uh hello,” Claire projected into the corridor “can I be of help?”
“Hi there,” Ivonne replied, startling her by looking straight at the default camera’s position at the top of the door “how about letting me in, got a question you might be able to help with.”
Somewhat flustered, Claire mumbled her assent and the doorway blinked open. Ivonne only hesitated for a moment on the threshold before confidently leaning into the zero-gravity of the interior and pushing off from the floor outside.
“Cool room.” Ivonne said as she floated forwards, “Didn't realise we could pick the interior decorations quite like this.”
Claire could do little but mutter as she orientated herself upright and scattered the various programs she had open back to non-existence.
“Coming through!” Ivonne exclaimed as she headed towards a desk piled with minimised files and folders.
“Wait-” Claire squeaked, “you'll hit it!” sending the halt commands to Ivonne's simulated form.
“Huh, weird.” Ivonne said as she slowed to a stop, hovering in empty space after accepting the simulation commands. “I did wonder how you managed to keep everything hovering like that.”
“It’s, uh, just the same commands you, er, you could use to move in any simulated space.”
“So I don't have to walk everywhere?” Ivonne's eyes lit up as she grinned. “Sweet.”
“Well, um, only in environs without gravity, elsewhere you'll just locomote as normal,” Claire replied, “But you really don't have to be walking around inside a simulated space if you have teleport privileges...”
Ivonne was grinning ear to ear. “I knew the creator of all this would have all kinds of secrets to share. So what else do I have to learn?”
“Oh no, I didn't create any of the simulation agent interface, that was around long before me. I hardly did anything except work off what had been done already.” Claire instinctively deflected the praise she felt was unearned. “Ah, I forgot. Do you want a seat?”
Flustered, Claire summoned an office chair into existence beside Ivonne.
“Thanks, so can I sit by doing the same thing you did before?”
“Oh, um yes. If you define it as your target and um...”
Ivonne floated down onto the chair, coming to rest as if she were still on the Earth's surface as her hair continued to drift in zero-g. Ivonne gave Claire her ‘best-friend’ smile as she began to speak:
“I was hoping you would be able to help me with a small problem I've been having with reaction times as we are now-”
“Oh you too?” Claire chimed in without thinking, “Lewis- I mean... It’s quite a common issue when operating machinery adapted to human response times.”
“Anything you might be able to do, make us able to run faster perhaps?”
“Oh no, no, no. A full human simulation puts definite limits on how fast it can- the barrier of Moore's law at subatomic scales- I can't do anything about all that. It’s just a fact of computing that any sufficiently complex process reaches limits of parallelisation and, and...”
“That’s okay,” Ivonne replied, putting up her hand to stop Claire's rambling, “I was just wondering if there was a way to make snap judgements faster. You know, the way that a human being can react faster than thought due to muscle memory.”
“Not really, well I guess...”
“Oh?” Ivonne remarked leaning forwards.
“I suppose if it were for only a very brief moment, less than a second. There is perhaps a way, I don't know for sure.”
Ivonne gently nudged her along, patiently returning Claire to the topic at hand when she got lost in thought. Together they planned out a method to give a simulated human much improved responses.
Half an hour later:
“It’s all down to balance right?” Claire reiterated, “So much of a human mind simulation is keeping the feedback loops inherent in the organic nervous system from going out of control. If the algorithms for calculating the stable equilibria of simulated brain chemical concentrations aren’t exact-”
“It all collapses into noise in a matter of moments.” Ivonne finished, “But if you don't need a simulation to stick around for that long.”
“Right, then you could get significant speedups due to using a cruder approximation. It'd be a kind of look ahead function of the simulated mind’s response."
"So how hard would it be to set up such a thing?"
"Well computer storage isn't really an issue, the changes to the whole crew's minds are recorded every thousand cycles with complete backups made every hundred thousand." Claire pondered for a moment, "I don't see why one of those snapshots couldn't be passed as input to a software assistant to act upon."
"Brilliant Claire" Ivonne said, "I knew you'd be able to help"
Claire could only smile nervously at this compliment.
***
There are a lot of characters in this story so I did my best to bring across their personalities in their introductions. Writing their dialogue has been fun!
I've been busy with other projects over the past few weeks so it took a while to get this written up. I've still got lots more of the story to go but the next part is mostly just a rough outline and notes. It may take a while to write but I am determined to post all of it.
Thanks for reading and I'd be happy to answer any questions or hear your feedback :)
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