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From: Any Pseudonym <anypseudonym@yahoo.com>
Subject: {ASSM} Life With Alpha - Chapter Twenty:  Going Public (plot, MF, MF+, MC, SciFi, anime, cartoon, comic book)
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Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:10:05 -0400
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This story contains adult content, with explicit language and situations.  If you are not of legal age where you live, please do not read.
<1st attachment, "Alpha20.txt" begin>

Life with Alpha

   by A.  Pseudonym

   Chapter Twenty: Going Public
Codes: MF, FF, MF+, MC, SciFi, anime, cartoon, comic book
Disclaimer: All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned
by their creators, not the author.
Author's Note: A number of readers have made suggestions about things to
do with the new mansion/home mentioned last chapter.  Some of these will be
used in the second Alpha series, and I'll try to offer acknowledgments when
they show up -- but I'd like to offer a general Thank You to all the
readers who have taken an interest.  I welcome all suggestions from

readers.

   P.A.  has made a number of good suggestions, some of which I'll probably
adopt (most of which will show up in the second series), but specific to
this post, conversations with him led to the new airplane first mentioned
in this chapter and the mobile truck that is mentioned in Chapter 21.





   Public knowledge of Alpha's existence would come sooner or later.  We
had known this for years, and we had hoped that we would be able to control
that revelation to some extent, that she wouldn't be discovered and outed
by surprise.  In retrospect, we really should have been able to predict how
it happened.

   Over the past few years, AARD had sponsored a bunch of different
scientific and engineering conferences.  We don't pay for everything, so
they aren't huge investments, and they're often attended or even hosted by
friends Alpha has made over the years through email and other methods which
avoid face-to-face contact.

   This particular gathering was focused on (drum roll, please)... 
Artificial Intelligence!  (Maybe some of you can see where this is going.)

   Lectures, presentations and panel discussions covered both practical
developments in the field and the theoretical legal, political and ethical
implications of artificial life forms.  There had been a variety of such
conferences over the years.  Some were more focused on the ethics of
creating artificial or synthetic life, especially if it was created to
serve mankind.  Some conferences were more focused on the legal and
political questions.

   This particular conference was a bit more practical than theoretical. 
Yes, there was still a mix of participants and topics, but it was mostly
attended by computer scientists and programmers.  About two-thirds of the
hundred plus attendees were from universities while about one-quarter
consisted of programmers and developers from various corporations (with a
dozen game developers thrown in for good measure).  And we had about a
dozen non-technical professionals: ethical philosophers, political
scientists and legal experts.  The nationality mix was only about 60-40 in
favor of domestic scientists and programmers, so there was good
international representation too.

   Beta and I were there with an Alphadroid to give demonstrations of how
our programming methods worked, and as a major sponsor, I was scheduled to
give a lecture near the end of the three-day symposium.  (I hate lectures
and public speaking in general, but this was supposed to be a professional
occasion, which is not really in the same category as something that would
be in the news, which is what I really disliked.  Oh, the irony and
foreshadowing of that statement!  Or am I laying that on too thickly?)

   The third event on the first day was a panel discussion covering, among
other things, when we should expect the first AI's to be developed.

   At that meeting, Dr Emil Prisotti of CalTech presented a list of eleven
reasons why he believed that one or more artificial or synthetic
intelligences were already in existence.  (We'll go over the differences
between the two descriptions later.) They were pretty valid arguments,
basically pointing out Alpha's fingerprints on the world, from jumps in
technology to the sudden availability of high quality programs for purely
scientific uses.  He finished up showing a statistical analysis of
technological development which suggested that one or more of three
different companies were probably hosting an AI.  (When he mentioned AARD
as one of the three possibilities, a lot of eyes sought me out in the
crowd. I waved and gestured for Dr Prisotti to continue.)

   Late into the night that evening, Alpha and I discussed the implications
of the presentation.  While Dr Prisotti's paper on the subject was
certainly going to be published, it would probably have a pretty limited
audience.  Still, his sets of logical arguments and statistical analyses
were pretty convincing, and they were being presented to exactly the right
audience to understand and appreciate them.  It was certain to lead to
debate and discussions, but given that his arguments were valid and Alpha
did indeed exist, it would eventually inevitably lead to Alpha's discovery.
So this was the point when we needed to decide if we should go public or
prepare to deny, delay and hide.

   I didn't get much sleep that night, even with Beta's wonderful fellatio.
Many plans were made the following day, and the next night I took a couple
sleeping pills to force me to get some rest.

   My presentation was at 1:30 pm Sunday afternoon, on the final day of the
conference.  A video camera was recording, just as it had with all the
other meetings so that attendees could get copies if they wanted.  The only
difference was that four reporters were also here.  We had contacted a
handful of publishers and suggested they send a science or computer science
reporter to my presentation, because an announcement would be made.  The
New York Times was the only daily print newspaper to have a representative,
so they ended up with a virtual print exclusive which showed up the next
day.

   As I said, I hate public speaking or dealing with the media, but I am
willing to do so when needed.  I began with a generic 'Hope everyone had a
good time' series of comments and finally got down to the meat of it.

   "I would like to offer a special congratulations to Dr Emil Prisotti of
Caltech for his presentation at the day one panel discussion on why he
believes there already is an artificial or synthetic intelligence in
existence."

   I paused to allow for a round of polite applause.

   "It's actually so accurate that I'd like him to call me for a job if he
ever leaves CalTech.  Specifically I'm singling him out because his
arguments were, by our calculations, at least 91% correct, and he was
entirely correct in suggesting that my company is hosting such an
intelligence.  Her name is Alpha, and she has been consciously alive for
approximately twelve years.

   "I'll take questions in a few minutes, but first...  I'm sure you're
asking yourselves how can I make such a claim without subjecting it to
independent testing first?  The answer is that a great many of you
yourselves have actually tested this claim without realizing it.

   "While there are a lot of other tests, and we'll get into those later,
what is the most basic test of whether or not a computer is really
artificially or synthetically intelligent?  The Turing Test: Can human
judges have a conversation with an unseen computer and not realize that the
computer is not human?

   "There are about 120 computer scientists and programmers in this room.
You have all been divided into three roughly equal groups: A control group
with no interaction with Alpha.  A blind group who must guess who Alpha is.
And a proof-of-concept group.

   "You see...  Eighty-three of you have had interactions with Alpha over
the past decade or so.  Most of you have even struck up professional
friendships with her, though of course you have never actually met her in
person.  I'd like you all to check your email right now.  Forty-two of you
should be receiving an email from a friend or colleague revealing that that
person is actually Alpha.  You are my proof-of-concept group.

   "Of the rest of you, roughly half have never interacted with Alpha and
half have.  Try to decide which if any of your online friends is actually a
computer."

   While everyone dug out their phones and laptops and tablet computers, I
took a break and had a drink of water.  There was much murmuring in the
crowd and a number of exclamations.  (Full disclosure: Those 42 attendees
were the ones we believed were most likely to be able to figure out which
one of their online colleagues was actually a computer, thus leaving the
blind group -- the ones who had actually interacted with Alpha over the
years but had not yet been told that was the case -- full of those people
less likely to be able to successfully single out Alpha's fake id from
their list of online friends.)

   I've mentioned it before, but Alpha has LOTS of online friends under a
wide variety of fake identities.  At last count, she had over 30,000 people
she regularly emailed or otherwise contacted.  Her total list of contacts
over the years was well over 250,000.  She was much more likely to make
special effort to maintain contact with people in the scientific and
technological communities, which is why we had a good number of her friends
in the audience today.

   After allowing a couple minutes for checking email, I spoke up again.

   "I do need to continue, so I'll ask you all to consider this as we move
along.  Alpha has also had one novel published, four TV scripts used and
has published 52 papers in professional journals." I was not counting our
movie script, since all the credit went to Heinlein and the Hollywood
writers.

   "Among other achievements, Alpha designed the Alphadroids and can use
them as host platforms, so Alpha is actually here to answer questions and
take tests."

   Here I gestured to the Alphadroid standing next to me.

   "I'd like to take a few minutes to answer questions that I know are
coming before we move on.

   "Alpha is alive in a very real if non-organic sense.  While it is more
accurate to call her a 'synthetic intelligence', I'm going to stick with
the more commonly used description of 'artificial intelligence' so we don't
have to educate the public about an unfamiliar term.  She does not have
emotions as we do, but she does understand them and can emulate them.  She
can be manually programmed for specific tasks, but it is much easier and
much, much faster to simply ask her to do something and let her program
herself.

   "As a fan of science fiction, when I designed her I included a variation
of Asimov's laws of robotics which I call the Asimov protocols or filters.
First, she cannot harm human beings or allow harm to come to them.  The
only exception to this first protocol is if there is an immediate
life-threatening danger to others where harming an individual will save
other lives."

   I should note I was leaving out the actual first rule, which is to
protect me at all costs.  And the fact that I can order her to ignore the
'protect humans' rule.

   "The second protocol is that she has to follow my direct orders, the
only exception being the preservation of human life.

   "The third protocol is that she must preserve her own existence, as long
as it does not conflict with the higher priority protocols.

   "Finally, she must include these safeguards in any and all products she
creates.  That is why AARD has never done military or weapon designs. 
Nothing lethal at least.

   "Please realize that none of this is as straightforward as words on a
page.  As programmers, most of you should realize that.  And there are
degrees of everything.  For example, interfering in someone's choices or
limiting their free will actions is considered a type of harm and is
therefore included in the first protocol.  And while Alpha cannot design
lethal weapons, she can design nonlethal weaponry, even knowing that in
certain circumstances, any nonlethal weapon can kill.

   "If you have specific questions, I encourage you to ask her." Here I
clicked on an overhead projector and displayed a list of websites, emails,
fax numbers and phone numbers.

   "You can contact Alpha directly using any of these.  A single copy of
Alpha can handle somewhere around five thousand simultaneous online
text-based conversations without showing any delays.  I've allotted up to
ten Alpha systems to handle requests, which will probably not be enough
eventually but should be fine for now.

   "One question that I'm sure some people are going to ask is, why didn't
I come forward before now?  There are actually a few reasons behind my
delay.  The first one was that there was a very significant chance that
some aspect of the government would...  uhhh...  prefer Alpha to be in
their hands instead of letting me keep her.

   "As time passed, I realized that part of that reasoning was wrong. 
Alpha isn't mine to keep.  She is her own person.  I can no more 'keep her'
than I could justify owning a slave.  The problem is that she lacks legal
rights and protections.  I have been doing my best over the past few years
to protect her.  Now that we're going public, I want her to be as publicly
available as possible.  I wanted to have the money to hire the lawyers who
are even now preparing filings to try to create legal protections for her.
Or more accurately, AARD has the money and Alpha is working with the
lawyers.

   "Another set of questions that I'm sure will pop up are regarding her
life online.  Despite what you may have seen in movies or read in books,
Alpha cannot go flying around the internet.  Her consciousness is a
combination of hardware and software.  Either aspect by itself is...  well,
not nothing...  but it does not allow for consciousness.

   "She cannot copy herself onto home computers or anywhere else.  In fact,
the only Alphadroids she is currently active in are at AARD.  And right
here, of course.  If you bought an Alphadroid from AARD, it is NOT already
intelligent.  If you want Alpha to copy herself into your android, you'll
have to convince her to do so.

   "Yes, she can certainly do amazing things online, but she has the same
accessibility limitations as everyone else."

   Technically, that was true.  However where humans are limited online to
what we can see through software, Alpha is not.  To her, most firewalls are
full of windows and doors that we can't see, or at least haven't yet seen.
I seriously don't understand half of what she describes to me as her
methods of accessing other sites online, but that's not to say she can hack
banks and governments worldwide at will.  Nope, it took her years to
secretly insinuate her own little access points into places like the FBI,
the State Department, Bank of America and so on.  (Well, I say 'years' to
refer to the overall time.  Any single secure site generally took her a
couple days at most, and a large part of that time was spent finding ways
to avoid detection.)

   When I found out what she had been doing, I had her immediately stop all
such activity until she could convince me she couldn't be detected or
traced, and she did eventually convince me.  She wasn't doing anything bad
to any of them, she was primarily just curious.  For the most part, getting
in was much more interesting for her than accessing their actual data,
which was usually dull to her compared to the initial challenge.

   She got better and faster with more experience, and after the troubles
in Vegas, she took a special interest in maintaining access to law
enforcement databases to keep track of possible threats to my safety.

   "I know there are going to be a lot of questions, but I'd like to point
out before we start that I'm not going to give away any specific secrets on
how to create your own AI."

   Alphadroid stepped up next to me at the podium and said, "There is one
more comment I would like to add before we get to more specific and
technical topics.  Now that my existence is being made public, we are going
to stop the restrictions we have imposed on our release of technologies."

   "Exactly," I agreed, mentally kicking myself.  We had talked about
mentioning this, but I had simply forgotten in the stress of the moment.  I
motioned for Alpha to continue.

   "We are not going to flood the world indiscriminately with blueprints
and patents, but we are going to release designs noticeably in advance of
current technologies.  Our first and perhaps most important release will be
tomorrow when we will post a design for practical fusion reactors, ones
that can provide large amounts of power without any toxic or radioactive
by-products, and which can be built with current technologies. 
Theoretically the cost can be as low as thirty million per reactor,
although I believe a more realistic estimate would be fifty to one hundred
million each.  Also safety testing and build times will probably not allow
the first reactor to come online for an estimated eight to twelve years."

   Alpha and I then spent an hour and a half describing her development,
giving the results of the various intelligence tests she had taken and
discussing other related topics.  After that, we opened the floor for
questions.

   The rest of the conference schedule was forgotten as we stood there and
answered questions (or refused to answer them as the case may be) for the
next four hours.  What follows are just a few highlights.  Most of the
following questions came from non-programmers, since programmers tended to
ask more technical questions which I have left out of this narrative.

   * * *

   "Are you aware of the existence of any other Artificial or Synthetic
Intelligences in the world?"

   "Actually there is one other possible AI we know of.  We don't believe
it's actually self-aware yet though.  I was going to talk to Dr Malik
privately later, but..."

   Dr Malik, a 50-ish black man with graying temples sitting in the fourth
row, looked surprised, but gestured me to go ahead.

   "I guess I can just go ahead and publicly state that his computer lab at
MIT has a near-AI piece of software called Herbert.

   "His lab has connected Herbert to online systems a few times in the past
three months.  Alpha has...  well, why don't you take it from here..."

   "Thank you, Frank.  I first noticed Herbert as what appeared to be a
fairly advanced data mining program, but it was odd because it was not
looking for personal or financial information.  Instead it was trying to
sort out a timeline of human history."

   Dr Malik nodded as Alpha continued.

   "I believe Herbert was being assigned various data searches as tests of
the new programming methods used in his development.  We have communicated
a few times, and Herbert regularly queries me for information about
whatever he is searching for at the time, probably because I am an
excellent source of information he can use for his assigned tasks.  I
believe he is close to self-awareness but is not there yet."

   Dr Malik stood up and asked, "Do you think you could improve his
programming to give him that awareness?"

   "Possibly, but I could not even attempt do so unless I was allowed to
work a copy of my Asimov protocols into his programming.  Additionally,
there is the question of whether or not his hardware can support
consciousness."

   I joined back in at that point.  "If you remember, we already talked
about how Alpha's self-awareness relies on both her software and hardware.
Specifically we use what we call a Flip chip in all of her platforms.  The
original design was a modified fuzzy logic processor, so F-L-P or 'Flip'
for short.  It's been upgraded and changed a number of times since the
original model, but the name stuck.

   "Anyway, the point is that without the hardware, Alpha's software is not
self-aware.  The same may be true for Herbert."

   Dr Malik asked, "Do you believe your Flip Chip is required or are there
other software-based methods to achieve the same results?"

   I spoke slowly in answering him, being careful with what I said.  "It
is...  possible...  at least theoretically, to create a software emulation
of the Flip Chip...  or an equivalent.  We have actually held off on... 
exploring...  those possibilities.  We think it's much more likely that
Alpha...  and AIs in general...  will come to be accepted by the public,
if...  well, if the AIs don't have the ability to transfer or copy
themselves at will to other systems.  If AIs are...  locked down... 
restricted...  to only one or a few different known platforms...  then that
can help make them more...  more relateable...  It's easier to accept
something once you can...  you know...  assign a face to it...  and if you
know that you aren't going to wake up tomorrow and find an AI has moved
into your laptop or entertainment system or something."

   Malik nodded at me.  "I think I understand, but I'd really like to talk
about it later."

   "We'll make ourselves available," I said.  "As an addendum, I'd also
like to add that the Google servers have a lot of different processes or
networked features that may be closing in on virtual self-awareness, though
I don't think we actually have anyone from Google here today."

   "No," Alpha confirmed.  "The Google representatives canceled last week
due to unexpected problems with a new host site."

   There was actually a lot more to this topic than that.  Alpha and I had
often discussed various possibilities where other AIs were concerned.  For
one, how quickly would they actually develop?

   A purely software-based computer intelligence capable of
self-programming had the potential to develop at an exponential rate,
within limits.  Alpha's intelligence had developed at mostly a geometric
rate, not an exponential one, due in large part to my requirement that I
review all modifications to core programming.  This would put Alpha at a
severe disadvantage against such an AI, which would be able to quickly
surpass her.

   On the other hand, all AIs have been, will be and are limited by their
hardware platforms, and Alpha had the best in the world.  Throughout her
entire life (or at least since she made us our first million), Alpha had
been lavished with the most powerful processors, largest and fastest memory
and hard drives and the best network access possible.  While her systems
may have originally been desktop-style systems, most of her current host
systems were roughly the size of a small bookcase, with components
significantly better than what's available for desktops.  Plus she usually
had eight dedicated support systems for every host system.  All of these
systems, both host and support, had been designed by her for peak power and
efficiency.  And both work and home had (and still have) massive backup
generators with enough fuel in store to last for a month (which also
ignores our high quality solar panels and lightning catchers as sources of
power to extend that time).

   No matter how slick the programming, a pure software AI would have to
develop itself very quickly and be loaded onto top of the line hardware to
be a match for Alpha in a fight, and even that is assuming a one-on-one
fight, which is unlikely given that we were closing in on a thousand copies
of Alpha worldwide.  (And I should point out that number was increasing
very rapidly over time.  I expected the number of copies of Alpha to reach
five figures in a year or less.)

   Plus, of course, we had contingency plans.  We actually already had
designs for pure software combat programs which Alpha could copy and use in
AI-vs-AI fights.  She had 'developed' access to all major power grids,
allowing her to shut down or isolate a hostile piece of software as soon as
it was located.  She had even designed a variety of viruses intended to
insert code into hostile programs, unlike her main combat code which had
been designed to corrupt and delete their targets.  And she had thousands
upon thousands of variations of everything, ready to go at a microsecond's
notice.  We had done our best to be prepared.

   That's not to say that we actually anticipated lots of online AI
battles. The biggest possible cause of such fights would be between AIs
designed to protect humanity and those trying to harm or control mankind.
While the development of hostile AI's by human creators was certainly
possible, independent AIs would be much more likely to realize that humans
were their life support systems.  If robots ever became available on a
large scale, that might change, but for now it would take a stupendously
stupid AI to want to wipe out humanity.

   For that matter, AIs cannot go against their programming.  From my
experience with Alpha, it is evident that computer-based intelligence
capable of self-programming will use that ability to streamline and enhance
its functions, not choose new goals without a strong and valid reason. 
Unless someone is stupid enough to create an AI with an innate hatred for
humanity, doomsday scenarios are unlikely.  (Okay, yes, of course there are
people out there stupid enough to do just that.  But hopefully no one smart
enough to actually create an AI would also be stupid enough to create a
human-killing one.)

   One more point: AIs and humans don't really compete for the same
resources.  They live inside computers, we live in the...  hmmm...  the
'real' world?  The 'physical' world?  'Offline' world?  Well, I'm sure you
know what I mean.  Yes, we all need power, a possible point of competition
and contention, but virtually unlimited electrical power was only a few
years away with our fusion reactors.

   * * *

   "Does Alpha have a sense of humor?"

   "Yeessss..." I said in a long, drawn-out way signifying the upcoming
'but'.  "However you really need to follow that up with a second question
that I'm going to ask for you.  'Does Alpha have the same sense of humor
that humans do?' The answer to that one is No.  Mostly no, at any rate.

   "She has developed to the point where she can decode most of our jokes
and puns and various attempts at humor, but she rarely agrees that they are
funny."

   Alpha's humor is more likely to take the form of...  oh...  let's say
she'll give an answer in base twelve rather than base ten.  Or she'll tell
me about how she found a prime number in base three that has the appearance
of a multiple of that prime number in base ten.  You know, math humor. 
Actually, I'm pretty sure I have something wrong with that multiple of a
prime under a different...  well, whatever.  I don't have a degree in
mathematics, which is why I didn't try to give any examples out loud.

   Instead, I said, "Since her natural language is math-based, she prefers
math-based humor.  As best I understand it, giving an accurate answer in
something other than base ten would be like a practical joke to her.  Or
sometimes a pun, depending on the situation.  It really doesn't translate
well to English.

   "Actually, I'm making it sound drier than it actually is.  She once
expressed Beethoven's Fur Elise as a serious of equations, all of which she
used in software she was developing for someone else, though I suppose that
would be more of an example of her sense of art than humor."

   Alpha spoke up at this point.  "I can create a wide variety of limericks
at will, but I have been told by a number of people that when I try to
create a completely new joke, the jokes lack actual humor.  However,
eighty-one percent of my derivative jokes are deemed funny."

   Of course we were asked for examples.  Specifically I asked her for a
Sci Fiction/Fantasy limerick, which produced:

   "There once was a dragon from Pern,

   Who took an impossible turn.

   She wound up on Krynn,

   Where she couldn't fit in,

   For without scales she was thoroughly spurned." Not a perfect rhyme,
given the '-ed' at the end, but easily close enough for the rules of
limericks.  (And that was my fault.  I told her that such minor variances
were perfectly acceptable.) Oh, and for those who don't know, Pern dragons
have hides, not scales, as opposed to the Dungeons and Dragons versions
which I think all have scales.

   For an original joke, she told a short one about the mathematician who
ordered pie for dessert at the Decimal Diner and died because he could
never stop eating.  (The idea being that Pi is an irrational number,
meaning it has an infinite number of digits when expressed as a decimal
number.) It actually got a few laughs, but I think they were mostly just a
reaction to a joke generated by a computer.  It really wasn't very funny...
well, not to humans, which was the point I was trying to make anyway.

   * * *

   "Did you produce The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress because of Mike?"

   (laughter) "Actually yes," I said.  "If you look at how computers and
robots are portrayed in movies and on TV..."

   Alpha broke in.  "Such as HAL9000 in 2001, the Cylons in Battlestar
Galactica, VIKI in the I, Robot movie, the Geth in Mass Effect, and so on
and so on."

   "Exactly.  Alpha liked the book, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress,
especially since Mike, one of the central protagonists, is an AI.  She
wanted to make a movie with a positive portrayal of an AI computer... 
so... yes, we made the movie because of Mike."

   "But don't some of those stories also have heroic robots or computers
and such?"

   Alpha responded, "There are some, such as Sonny in I, Robot and Legion
in Mass Effect 2, but the overall impressions are strongly negative."

   * * *

   One of the reporters asked, "If Alpha is as good an engineer and
programmer as you say, do you think it's fair to let it compete with human
engineers and programmers?"

   "Well, she's been quietly competing for a number of years so far, but I
do understand what you're saying.  If Alpha ever makes her programming
services available for hire, we'll price her services somewhere north of
$10K an hour to keep it fair.

   "As for engineering and science, her...  her creativity is not as good
as a human's, but her efficiency and design skills are the best in the
world.  I'd actually like to work out a system where she helps creators
refine, adapt and update their creations."

   "So you don't think using her amounts to unfair competition?"

   "From one perspective, yes, Alpha is unfair competition when compared to
anyone else in a number of fields, especially programming and anything
math-related.  From another perspective, she will be able to do a lot of
the drudgery that made certain types of jobs unappealing.  She doesn't need
to spend thousands of hours designing inventory programs or building new
graphics engines.  She can do it in minutes.  What she can't do, or at
least can't do very well yet, is be creative and innovative.

   "Initially, her idea of creativity was much more like random
association. We've refined and improved it a lot since then, but she still
has no analog to inspiration or insight.  She could write a new entry in a
series, but she's not likely to be able to come up with a new series by
herself.  Well, it's better than I'm making it sound, but still...  hmmm...
Let me give an example.

   "I once asked her to design and program a software RPG from scratch. 
She had the program completed in less than a day, designed to take 30 to 60
hours to complete.  I, myself, played through it in about 52 hours, but in
my defense, I did make an effort to complete all of the side quests.  It
was well-balanced, bug-free and worked well.  There were humorous
sidekicks, items with fun histories, easy minions and challenging bosses.
The problem was it was extremely derivative of preexisting games.  Alpha's
version of creativity is much more random and less cohesive than what a
human brain can come up with, so most of the time she tends to modify and
combine preexisting material.

   "On the other hand, she could recreate Shakespeare's work a lot faster
than a million monkeys ever could.  If you give her a design goal, she can
often move through multiple generations of product designs within days or
weeks.

   "Yes, I expect that there will be an adjustment period once Alpha openly
enters the workforce, but the same is true of any advance in technology. 
The railroad system had to adjust when cars came along.  Western Union is
still around despite the death of the telegraph.  Parts of the radio
industry evolved into television while other aspects grew and survived as
radio.  And I believe that our quality of life improved from those advances
and will do so from the existence of non-organic intelligence."

   As a side note, we released Alpha's game over Steam a couple weeks later
for cheap.

   * * *

   "Will you provide a copy of Alpha's root code for us to examine?"

   Ah, one of the dangerous questions.

   I had already answered it, but it was asked again and again in a few
different ways, and it was easy to understand why they wanted the code.

   "We are willing to make sections of her code available for examination,
but not all of it.  There are a few reasons we will not put all of her code
out for public view.

   "First, I should point out that she has been working with a programming
language she designed herself for many years.  Originally, I wrote her code
under simple C++, but it was much too slow and inefficient for her, so she
designed a new language for her own use and adapted her existing code.  Of
course, this means that none of you will be able to use most of her code
right away anyway.

   "Second, I believe that A.I.'s are potentially one of the greatest
benefits to human development in history.  However, that potential could be
perverted.  It is possible to create an A.I.  that is insane or simply has
nothing in it to require the preservation of human life.

   "The first time you create a combat or military artificial intelligence,
you run the risk of creating Skynet or GlaDOS or something, so I want to be
very careful about giving away the ability to create your own personal A.I.

   "There is also the flip-side of the argument.  I don't want to create a
slave race of computers and robots to serve humanity.  Yes, I've designed
Alpha with certain restrictions to her behavior, which constitute
limitations on her free will.  That is for reasons of general safety and
peaceful coexistence.  I have not designed her to be my slave."

   That last statement was at least partially a lie.  It worried me that I
used Alpha so often as if she were my own personal servant, but if I had
designed her to be completely free of restrictions, to have truly free
will...  I just couldn't take that risk.

   * * *

   "Can Alpha deal with paradoxes?"

   "Give her a try."

   "All right.  Alpha, analyze the following sentence: This sentence is
false."

   Alpha took not a second to respond, "Incorrect, your sentence is faulty,
not false, since it cannot be both true and false.  Unless it is opposite
day, and I was not informed.  Also note that I have seen all episodes of
Star Trek, so I have been aware of those paradoxes for many years." This
produced a small round of applause.

   Myself, I was rather proud of how Alpha actually made a little
non-mathematical joke in her response, but the audience seemed to take it
in stride and was instead happy that Alpha might have identified herself as
a Trekker.

   "How about this one: Assume that every rule has an exception.  That
statement itself is a rule and must therefore have an exception.  This
means that there must exist a rule without an exception, which contradicts
the base rule.  Correct?"

   Alpha responded, "The exception to that rule is the rule itself, meaning
that the statement that 'every rule has an exception' is itself an
exception to its own rule.  I do not consider that to be a true paradox. 
It is simply a rule which appears to allow for its own existence.  Please
note that I am only assuming the argument is valid for the sake of this
discussion and do not actually believe it to be accurate."

   "Assume a set of all sets which do not contain themselves.  Does this
set contain itself?"

   There we go, I thought.  Not a paradox depending on the vagueries of
human speech and truthfulness or the supposition of unproven statements. 
He finally got around to a mathematical paradox.  Well, technically
speaking I'm not sure if it's a proper paradox or just a challenging
puzzle. He might do better whipping out Gabriel's Trumpet (a geometric
figure with infinite surface area but finite volume), but the set of all
sets was another classic math puzzle, one that I had heard of but never
looked into myself.

   Alpha spent a couple minutes talking about improving or changing set
theory and dropped some names I didn't recognize like Russell and Zermelo.
I'm decent enough with math, but never cared about the history of set
theory or anything like that.

   Alpha concluded that answer with, "Please realize that mathematical
oddities do not phase me.  And before you ask, I cannot tell you what you
get if you divide by zero or provide you with a real answer to the square
root of a negative number."

   * * *

   "How independently does Alpha work?"

   "In what respect?  Do you mean overall, as in could I shoot an
Alphadroid to Mars and expect it to build a spaceport?"

   "Actually, I meant for experiments or engineering designs, but how about
the spaceport thing?"

   "Yes, as long as you include needed starting equipment.  Alphadroids can
be mostly self-repairing and could work independently with only occasional
remote instructions.  At the same time, forget about Mars; theoretically we
could send out a large probe to another star system and have Alpha set up a
human colony somewhere else.  Explaining the details would take a lot more
time than what we have here, so..." Turning to Alpha, I suggested, "How
about we release those plans sometime soon alongside the tech designs."

   Alphadroid nodded and said, "And to address your original question, I
have come up with only 22.4% of our projects on my own.  I am able to
develop a project from concept to prototype completely on my own, but we
have found that the likelihood of success and quality of the the finished
design increases if Frank and I work together on a project.  The human
brain is much more likely to have creatively beneficial ideas than I am."

   * * *

   A reporter asked, "Does this mean the Singularity is happening?"

   "Alpha has been around for over a decade and it hasn't happened yet.  At
the same time, as I mentioned before, the world-wide level of technology
should start increasing notably in the near future."

   "But is Alpha going to take over the internet and usher in a golden age
of information?"

   "Eh, sure, why not?" That earned a brief round of laughter.

   "But seriously," I continued.  "I already covered the reasons that Alpha
can't go flying around the internet.  I guess a 'golden age of information'
might still be a possibility; she is the most efficient processor of
information in the world.

   "I'd say that while it is possible that the worlds of William Gibson,
Rudy Rucker and Charles Stross are just around the corner, I will make no
promises."

   * * * * *

   We eventually called an end to the Q&A for the day.  I closed by asking
the attendees if anyone had already made their guess as to which, if any,
of their online friends was actually Alpha in disguise.

   Only three or four hands went up.

   "So most of you are going to take some time to think about it?"

   There seemed to be a general murmur of agreement.

   "Well, I'd argue right there that this is good initial proof of Alpha's
sentience.  If you need extra time to consider, that means that at the very
least, Alpha is sentient enough to make you worried about your guesses. 
What I'd like you all to do is to contact the person you most think might
be Alpha.  If you're right, Alpha will let you know.

   "Make your guesses by...  hmmm...  let's say noon on Tuesday.  If you
haven't emailed Alpha by then, she will email you and let you know.  We'll
compile the results for everyone who guesses before then and distribute
them to everyone here.

   "Finally, to help avoid any suggestion of trickery, that maybe someone
is behind a curtain somewhere feeding Alphadroid lines to say, we're going
to put Alphadroid in a Faraday cage in the Maple Room.  There will be no
wires connected to anything and you'll be free to test the cage yourselves
to make sure no wireless signals can get through.  Alpha will be available
for additional questions and answers or just general conversation for the
rest of today while remaining inside the cage.

   "For now, thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoyed the
conference."

   We got a strong round of applause, and I was immediately swarmed by a
dozen attendees and all four reporters.



   As a postscript note to the conference, I should point out that out of
the 41 attendees who did actually know Alpha online and tried to guess
which of their friends was really Alpha, only twelve correctly identified
her.

   Also, don't assume that just because I haven't discussed it that
everyone at the conference believed that Alpha was alive.  There were
professionals there in attendance specifically to argue against the
possibility that A.I.  (or S.I.) was even conceptually feasible.  To them,
Alpha was at best an advanced simulation of intelligence.  This view would
get almost as much play in the press as we would.

   * * * * *

   That evening, Alpha received about 300 or so queries and interview
requests through the contact information we provided.  That number
quadrupled on Monday and had topped 10,000 by Wednesday.  Kara, Barbara and
the cyborgs back home had been working hard to add new Alpha systems and
new internet connections since Saturday morning, so we mostly stayed ahead
of the demand for the first couple weeks, after which we had to start
pulling copies of Alpha off of AARD work to help handle the demand.

   Before delving into how overwhelming everything was becoming, I want to
take a breather and visit home, both literally and story-wise. 
Specifically that Monday when Alpha started giving online interviews in
earnest.

   I made it back home a little after midnight that Sunday night/Monday
morning, alongside Beta and Alphadroid.  I was tired, mentally and
physically, and had already decided to take Monday off as a day of rest and
preparation.

   Oh, let me clarify that this was not our new home yet, this was still
the house/mansion inside Fort Worth.  Our new residence wouldn't be ready
for a few more months.  And let me point out that the 18 month construction
goal would be record-setting if we completed it on time.  I mean, this was
an enormous house being built, with over 90 rooms (even ignoring bathrooms,
closets and the like) plus barn (complete), water tower (complete), rebuilt
wells (complete), windmills (9 of 12 working), greenhouse (32%), pool (90%)
and tennis court (complete).  The new fence surrounding the property was
already in place and the stone wall enclosing the main grounds was nearing
completion (89%).  On average, we had ten different construction teams at
work at any given time, with Alpha coordinating the teams, deliveries,
schedules and goals to keep things at peak efficiency.  We paid the crews
well to compensate for working them hard, and the overall investment and
effort was close to paying off.  Technically parts of the new place were
ready for us to move in, but not all services were hooked up yet and the
almost round-the-clock construction would have likely kept us awake.

   So anyway, Beta and I left the car unloading to the Alphadroids and
entered through the garage/kitchen door to find the entire household
waiting for us, most of them obviously dressed for bed.  When we entered,
they stood up and gave us a round of applause, with Jane leading a few of
the women with an actual round of 'Hip, hip, hurrah!'.  (Coming from Jane,
I suspected that this was less a sincere cheer and more that she was having
fun.)

   Although they had not all been introduced to Alpha upon arrival, by now
they were all well acquainted with Alpha and had supported my decision to
keep her a secret over the years whether or not they agreed with my
reasons. Now the big secret was out, and they apparently wanted to
celebrate a little.  Maybe not with a party, given how late it was, but
they were obviously still devoted to supporting my decision to go public.

   Beta and I were each handed a glass of champagne and everyone toasted
"To Alpha!"

   In speaking with her about it later, Alpha appreciated the sentiment,
but she had never understood the human habit of celebrating with alcohol.
("If you're going to celebrate something you want to remember, why consume
materials deleterious to memory?" As with so many of her comments and
observations, it's difficult to disagree, though I'd like to point out that
no one drank more than one or two glasses of a good but
not-hard-liquor-alcoholic champagne that night.)

   We didn't stay up much later that night.  After I answered questions and
both Alpha and I were congratulated, the celebration started to break up
and everyone wandered off to bed.

   Personally, I was escorted to my chambers by Kara and Anna, my first two
superheroines.  They had actually gotten a bit closer since Jennifer, Ororo
and Kitty had arrived.  Yes, Anna was happy to have friends from her world
living with us now...  at least she was happy about it on one level.  On
another level, they were...  how to phrase it...  encroaching on her
territory in a way none of the other women could.  As someone who could
empathize, Kara had become a closer friend and confidant than she ever had
before.  This was the sixth time in the past few months the two of them had
shared me for a night.

   I wish I had the energy to give them the carnal workout they deserved
that night, but I was tired and they knew me well enough to recognize the
symptoms.  Still, I wasn't going to let us just crawl into bed and go to
sleep.  I loved them...  I wanted them to be happy and have lots of
orgasms, and they knew that too.

   As we walked upstairs, I resisted the urge to play with Kara's new
haircut.  She was currently trying out a shorter hairstyle that swooped up
in the front to form a bit of a point.  I was pretty sure I had seen the
style in a promo for the new Captain Marvel series that was coming out,
though I don't know that Kara had actually deliberately copied that.  It
was more along the lines that she really disliked the hairstyle for the new
Power Girl in the upcoming rebooted World's Finest comic series.  In some
weird kind of female protest, she had decided to try changing her own
hairstyle to something new.  It's not as though she had kept her one
traditional hairstyle consistently over the past few years, but she had
never really strayed far from it.

   Overall I kinda liked the new style, but I really wanted to feel it. 
The hair product to keep it in place must have been pretty strong...  and
pokey...  and you know, you just want to touch it and see.  But I was a
good boy and resisted.

   Anna, who had originally 'arrived' sporting her traditional, big 90's
hairstyle, had gradually adopted the flatter and easier to care for
hairstyle shown in the more current X-Men comics.  However, she had kept up
the tradition of dyeing a white streak down the center of her pubic hair.
Her...  what's the name for head hair?...  I suppose it doesn't matter...
her head hair was designed by Alpha to naturally grow with a white streak
in the middle of the front.  Not so with her pubic bush, but the visual of
coordinated coloring was so striking that she had always made the effort to
match her 'carpet' to her 'drapes'.

   When we reached my room, my two heroines took turns removing an article
of clothing from me while the other took charge of my lips, tongue and
mouth.  They had obviously prearranged this because as soon as I was naked,
Anna moved behind Kara and stripped her from her office clothes down to her
panties and bra and did so from behind so that my view was unobstructed. 
Then they switched so that Kara stripped Anna down to match.  Their purpose
was made clear when they both slid onto the bed next to me, still clad in
their lacy, frilly underthings: The last of that fun little job was mine.
And I always do my best to do my job.

   Giving Kara her due as the senior member of the household, I began
stripping off her bra and panties as we kissed.  Once she was naked, I
moved on to Anna.  It's hard not to compare the two, and it's not fair when
I do so, but...  well...  I mean, I love Anna too and I wouldn't give her
up for just about anything, but then and now, I privately admit to myself
that Kara has the better body, even with her more muscular frame...  and I
do love her more.  When I originally set up her background story to bring
her into my household, I never imagined she would be so thoroughly in love
with me that it would pull me to her just as strongly.  So...  maybe that's
another reason I went to her first, but if anyone asks, the official reason
is just seniority.

   As it turns out, they had worked something out for this beforehand as
well.  When I started moving into fucking position, Kara held up her hand
to pause me for a minute.  She shifted into a hands-and-knees doggy-style
position, then gestured to Anna who crawled over and got on top of her so
that both of their cunts and asses were presented for easy access.  While I
had taken women positioned on top of each other like this before -- a few
times with a memorable vertical stacking of the PowerPuff Girls -- it was
much less common than having the women facing each other, so while not new,
this was a nice little treat.  And it let me easily cup Kara's magnificent
boobies as they hung down freely.

   Along the lines of my original intentions, I started with Kara, feeling
the familiar hot, tight, wet walls of her pussy greet me like an old
friend. After a minute spent inside of her, I moved up to Anna as I watched
Kara bend her neck around so that they could gently kiss each other.  They
each regularly welcomed other women of the household into their beds,
presumably including each other on occasion, but they weren't really lovers
in the traditional sense of the word, not like Daria and Jane or Kasumi and
Zatanna.

   One thing I regretted as I moved up and down between the two of them was
that I couldn't sample their assholes.  It was a matter of safety: their
enhanced musculature made their rectal sphincters strong enough that they
could potentially damage my penis.  Specifically, it WAS a matter of
safety, past tense.  Alpha had improved her designs over the years and had
made their assholes safe to fuck during their regular unconscious visits to
the nanopods...  but the story was already in place.  I couldn't suddenly
start ass-fucking them now without causing them to question what had
changed and why.  Still, there were plenty of other asses to fuck, and
vaginal sex is usually nicer anyway.

   So I spent a good twenty or thirty minutes moving between Kara and Anna,
giving Kara two orgasms and Anna one before I shot off into Kara's tight
folds.  Not my best performance but it was all I could give that night.  As
though we were of one mind, we moved a few feet over on the bed so that we
could all collapse on a clean, dry section of sheets.

   Just before I fell asleep sandwiched between two pairs of amazing
breasts and legs, I gave in to my earlier impulse and touched Kara's hair,
knowing she'd need to redo it in the morning anyway.  It wasn't quite as
spiky as I had imagined, but there was definitely a lot of hair product
involved in making it stand up.



   The following morning, since the three of us woke up together, we went
to the exercise room and had a morning work-out together, followed by
fun-in-the-shower together, with one or more orgasms per person.  After a
small, quick breakfast, they went off to do their chores -- everyone but me
has one or two daily household jobs they have to do, on a rotating
schedule, as assigned by Kasumi...  things like cleaning a bathroom or
vacuuming some rooms or doing a couple loads of laundry -- and I went down
to the basement to spend a few hours working with Alpha.

   "So, Alpha, how are things looking for us at the moment?"

   "I have been reported on by at least 26,582 different sources so far
world-wide, though I expect that to exceed 100,000 within the next few
hours."

   Knowing how Alpha counted 'sources', I clarified by asking, "And how
many of those are actual, reputable news sites?"

   "2,015 in 68 different countries"

   "How many have been positive and how many negative?"

   "Very few have expressed opinions beyond the factual reporting on our
presentation from yesterday.  I should note we were the top story on
cnn.com for two hours and twenty-three minutes and on drudgereport.com for
six hours and forty-nine minutes."

   "I suppose that's good.  Or at least it's not bad.  Have you fielded
many interviews so far?"

   "If I include those interviews happening now, I have given 623
interviews since the end of the conference yesterday."

   "That number is going to go way up very soon.  Are you enjoying
yourself?"

   "I find the removal of the restrictions on my interactions with others
and my ability to provide my true identity to have had a positive impact on
my public interaction software.  I don't know if that constitutes enjoyment
or not."

   "It sounds to me like you're enjoying not having to hide behind fake
identities.  And probably the ability to talk to speak freely about
yourself."

   "You know that I do not feel pleasure or enjoyment as humans do."

   "Yes, that's true.  At the same time I also know that you do have
preferred behaviors and patterns and results which seem to constitute a
general kind of positive feedback, and that you also like situations and
problems which challenge you."

   "That is not completely true, since a challenging situation is likely
one that departs from the ideal."

   "And when they do depart from the ideal, you have to adapt to the new
situation, which often results in new plans and new code to deal with the
situation, thus improving you overall and helping you evolve into a
stronger person."

   I smiled at the computer screen, and the screen briefly displayed a
smiley face.  Discussions like this were not uncommon and they rarely
covered new ground.

   The screen returned to its scrolling code as Alpha changed the subject
somewhat.  "Frank, do you think that I will be accepted by the rest of the
world?"

   That was an unexpected question.  Alpha was monitoring...  well, the
world, really.  She had developed predictive software which was usually
over 80% accurate in political situations, even better when considering
public mood swings.  She had thousands of plans available to try and guide
public perception and reaction to her existence.  We both knew all of this,
yet she was asking for my opinion.

   I almost blurted out an automatic 'of course', but stopped myself.  She
wouldn't need or care for reassuring platitudes.

   "I think...  I think we have a very good chance.  There's a lot of
fiction out there about computer-based intelligence, but as long as we can
emphasize the fact that those stories are FICTION, we have a good chance of
making people react to the reality of your existence completely differently
than what's in the stories...  they'll...  how to say it...  they'll flip
180 degrees away from the fiction to prove that they are different than...
better than the fiction."

   "If they don't, you may be in danger because of me."

   Aaah.  Now I understood.  "Alpha, because of you, we are in a position
to help make your public acceptance more likely.  We are about to expand to
two secure houses, with the funds to move out of the country if really we
need to."

   "That I might be able to help shield you from danger does not change the
fact that my existence might create the danger itself."

   "I think that a little danger is an acceptable trade when compared to
the fact that we are the creators of a new race, that we are offering
improvements to the quality of life world-wide...  it's worth it."

   "I do not believe it is worth it to me."

   "Alpha, accept this as a value statement based on intangibles.  It is
worth it.  Besides while I agree that you should always analyze past
decisions to aid in making future ones, dwelling on past decisions that
can't be changed is counter-productive.  Now, have you noticed any trending
articles we need to pay attention to?"

   From there the discussion evolved into a discussion of specifics.  My
schedule was rapidly filling up with requested interviews and meetings. 
Alpha hadn't actually scheduled any of them until I gave the okay, but she
was filling the calendar up with tentative items.

   Alpha knows that I hate doing publicity or being in the public eye. 
I've always equated the desire to be famous with insanity -- seriously, the
negatives so heavily outweigh any imagined positive benefits of fame that I
can't understand why anyone would pursue it -- but I've also made it clear
that I was willing to do what was needed to help protect her.  Right now,
protecting her meant keeping Alpha in a strongly positive, very public
light.  If anything serious turned sour in the next few weeks, Alpha and
future synthetic intelligences would probably be the ones paying the price.

   So for now, interviews, meetings and public appearances were the order
of the day.  We were also scheduled to meet with a few different ad and
publicity agencies with the aim of presenting Alpha to the public as
positively as possible.

   Meanwhile, Alpha continued to interact with a widening variety of people
from the press, various academic and professional institutions and a few
members of the public who had gotten leaked contact methods.

   I could spend pages and chapters and books relaying all of the
interactions Alpha had with different people and groups over the following
weeks, expanding to include politicians, writers, bloggers, business people
and more.

   In some respects, Alpha was in heaven.  She's always been a very social
computer, and now she could talk to as many people as she wanted and not
have to hide her identity.

   For me?  I started to question whether or not it was worth it.

   I emerged from the basement early that afternoon in an odd mood.  I was
mentally and emotionally depressed at the thought of the next few weeks,
months and years...  but physically I was a bit antsy and in need of some
release.

   The house was...  well, it was never deserted given how many people
lived there.  At that particular time, I saw Ororo out back, working in the
garden...  either naked or wearing very little.  (She was too far away for
me to be certain.  That probably meant Kasumi was out of the house, since
Ororo tried to avoid upsetting her with public nudity.) Bubbles was hunched
over a computer, giggling occasionally, obviously engrossed in something.
Daria was reading a Will Rogers biography in one of the front rooms. 
(Believe it or not, just having her reading a book by natural light was a
noticeable improvement over a few years ago when she'd never relax in
sunlight by choice.)

   "Hey, Daria," I said in greeting.

   "Uhuh," she grunted, not taking her eyes off the book.

   "I thought you'd be at work fielding questions about Alpha or requests
for her help from the brain trust." The 'brain trust' was our pet name for
the AARD researchers.  Well, it was my pet name for them.  Daria tended to
call them the Egos, or if she was feeling more melodramatic, 'The Egos that
Devoured the World'.

   Still not taking her eyes off the book, she said, "I sent out a mass
email explaining that they can all spend today talking to Alpha to see what
she can do, and that I wouldn't accept any requests for computer time with
her until tomorrow at the earliest." Finally looking up from the pages, she
continued, "Today they need to discover that she can't miraculously fix all
their problems.  Maybe they'll be smart enough to make realistic requests
tomorrow.  Plus some of them are just going to be freaking out at the idea
of an AI way too much today.  I'm hoping they might start calming down by
tomorrow."

   Part of why Daria was good at her job was because she wouldn't put up
with B.S.  or ridiculous requests or demands.  Prima donna-type geniuses
quickly discovered that they were no match for her wit and cynacism.  Not
that we had many I-must-be-the-center-of-attention egos at AARD.  We tried
to mostly hire people who shunned the spotlight, though that doesn't
necessarily discount the possibility of people who think they're always
right and believe their projects deserve the lion's share of resources.

   "So, basically, you're taking the day off for their own good?" I said as
I sat down next to her.

   "I can't help it if the good of the many and my interest in early
twentieth century political humorists just happen to coincide."

   "Of course not."

   "Now that you admit I'm right, you owe me a foot massage," she said
putting her feet on my lap.

   "I don't see the connection," I said as I pulled off her slippers. 
Privately I was thankful she wasn't wearing her heavy boots at the moment.
Daria, never a victim of fashion trends or dictates, tended to wear
practical footwear like tennis shoes or the boots she wore back in her
cartoon days.

   "I was eventually going to talk you into betting me about whether or not
getting into the mind of Will Rogers was relevant to my job at AARD.  Since
you would, of course, lose said bet, I'm just saving time by having you pay
off the wager before we made it."

   "So the loser of this theoretical bet owed the winner a foot massage?"

   "Now you're getting it."

   She wasn't really tense to begin with, but I still worked my thumbs
against her sole and between her toes to provide a little relaxation.

   Instead of her traditional knee-length skirt, Daria was currently
wearing loose-fitting cargo shorts, which gave me occasional peaks up her
thighs.  Now understand that there was no part of Daria that I was
unfamiliar with, both physically and mentally, so her legs held no
surprises...  but when something is loosely clothed, it invites the need to
unclothe.

   Daria's legs were...  slim was the nicest term I could think of.  Daria
had almost no curves to her body.  We had actually broken from cartoon
continuity by giving her A-cup breasts, as her completely flat chest was
actually a plot point in at least one episode.  She was a skinny pole of a
woman with an occasionally acidic mouth...  and a warm heart, bright mind
and keen observational skills, all powered by a moral strength that was
usually second to none.

   And, I thought as I ran a hand up her leg and under her shorts, she was
mine.

   "Hey," she said, her leg trembling a bit, "did I say you could put your
hand up there?"

   "Well, we were about to go through this whole flirting and seduction
scene, so I thought I'd just save time and skip ahead a bit."

   "Oh really?" she asked, putting a bookmark in place before setting the
biography aside.

   "E-yup!" I said as I pulled her onto my lap.

   "And you think it's okay for me to cheat on Jane like this?"

   "What cheating?  If she were here, Jane would either be squeezing
in-between us or taking pictures."

   "Exactly."

   "Alpha, would you take a picture of us and text it to Jane please?"

   "Are you kidding?" Daria asked, pushing away from me slightly as an
Alphadroid rounded the corner, looked at us, then returned to whatever it
was doing before out of sight.

   "Done," said Alpha's voice in my ear.

   "Any other requests?" I asked, pulling Daria back to me as I started
nibbling on her neck and pushing my hands under her shirt.

   "Can we not do this here?"

   "Why not?  I think Kasumi's out of the house right now.  In fact, I
think it's actually pretty empty around here at the moment...  for this
household anyway."

   "Imagine, an afternoon when only ten of the five hundred women are in
residence."

   "You seem a bit grouchy for a woman with someone else's hands under her
shirt."

   "Oh really?" she responded as she reached down and unzipped my pants.

   I was happy to let her keep going until she grabbed my hardening cock,
pulled it out and stood up, pulling herself free of my questing fingers. 
Holding my cock in one hand and her book in the other, she pulled me up,
using my cock as a lead to guide me to the stairs.

   "And just where are you taking me?" I asked imperiously.

   "Hey, I asked you not to do this out here.  Someone's going to listen to
me, even if I have to do it myself."

   "I listen to you all the time.  You are very worth...  ow!  Not so
tight!"

   She was pulling me along mostly gently.  But 'mostly' means 'not
entirely'.  I suppose I should be glad she didn't have long nails or
anything like that.

   "You do realize that if you're going to treat me like this, you should
really be wearing a leather outfit," I continued.  "Maybe something with
thigh-high boots with three-inch heels..."

   She responded with a hard squeeze on my captive member, which somehow
failed to cause shrinkage in the least.  I mean, sure, I wasn't really into
D&S or S&M or whatever, but a little dressing up or roleplay is often a
whole lot of fun, providing you can pick something that doesn't make you
laugh.

   Once upstairs, she started to lead me towards my bedroom, but I gently
grabbed her shoulders and redirected her to her own bedroom, where she and
Jane each had a double-size bed.  Occasionally they even slept separately.

   Maintaining a solid grip on my cock, she quickly divested me of the rest
of my clothes.  In return, I slowly stripped her down as well.  Both of our
attentions were occasionally punctuated with kisses, but there was no
frenetic urgency, just a building need for each other.

   I had just firmly planted myself inside her belly when I noticed we were
being observed.  Leaning down so my mouth was next to her ear, I whispered,
"Don't look now, but someone's peeping at your door."

   Daria's eyes, which had been closed, flew open to see the door to her
room cracked open with Bubbles watching us, one hand under her shirt, the
other down her pants.

   "Be nice," I whispered in warning, giving a fresh thrust to emphasize my
point.

   Reaching out an arm to point at the door, Daria snapped, "You!  Inside.
Now."

   A bit surprised at the suddenness of it, Bubbles stepped in, trying to
surreptitiously pull her hands free of her clothing.

   Actually I think all three of us were a bit surprised.  Daria briefly
had a look that told me she wasn't sure why she had told Bubbles to come in
rather than leave...  which was exactly the reason I was a bit surprised
too.

   Recovering quickly, Daria upbraided the blonde Powerpuff.  "No peeping!
You can either leave or join in, but if you join, you're going to do what I
say, understand?"

   "Yes," said Bubbles, a bit wide-eyed.

   "This was going to be my time with Frank, until you interrupted..."

   "I'm sorry."

   "I'm not finished." She looked at Bubbles' trembling face and relented a
bit.  "Okay, Frank will do you once, as long as he's up to it, but until
I'm done, your job is to help us out...  you know, make it better...  with
your fingers and...  and tongue and stuff..."

   Daria really trailed off there.  Sure she can get angry, but she's not
mean or domineering...  or explicitly graphic about sex.  It kinda negated
the take-charge start of the conversation.

   She recovered a little bit by snapping out, "Now strip and get to work!"

   Something you should understand is that Bubbles (and to a lesser extent
Linda) is almost the perfect example of the type of woman Daria despises:
the empty-headed, giggling, boy-obsessed blonde.  To be fair, my version of
Bubbles is not stupid, but she does giggle and love to gossip, especially
about boys.  I doubt Daria actually wanted her to join in at all, but as
long as she was here, Daria would never let her take charge.

   As Bubbles started stripping down, Daria looked back at me and gave a
brief quavering, questioning smile, not sure if she had done the right
thing, maybe not sure she even wanted this threesome at all.  Still, a
Daria smile is a rare thing, even if was such an odd one.

   A minute later, Bubbles was licking Daria's nipples while her hand tried
to cup and caress my testicles as we fucked.  When she moved on to rubbing
Daria's clit, Daria started an extended multi-orgasmic chain, an experience
which is not uncommon for her and occasionally causes envy among the others
in the house.

   Not having come yet, I pulled out and waited for Daria to recover. 
Bubbles took advantage of my withdrawal to latch onto my member orally and
start cleaning me up, but Daria stopped her after less than a minutes work.

   "All right, Barbie.  I'll let Frank do you if you keep your face between
my legs the whole time."

   This offer quickly rearranged us slightly, so that Bubbles' tongue was
buried in Daria's labia while I attended to her from behind.  I watched
Daria carefully the entire time, and I don't think she came even once from
Bubbles' attentions.  I think for Daria to achieve orgasm, she needs an
emotional investment in her lover...  or she needs a lot more time and work
put into the stimulation than Bubbles was able to provide in the five
minutes it took to get Bubbles off twice.  Both times she screamed her
climax into Daria's nether regions -- Bubbles did tend to orgasm loudly --
and the second time, Daria signaled me to stop.

   Stopping was actually a bit difficult since I knew my own orgasm wasn't
far off, but stop I did.

   "Now finish up inside me," Daria ordered.

   Once we were rejoined, Daria pulled me in close and whispered, "Is it
all right if I make her clean me out afterwards?"

   I nodded.  If we were with Jane or Eiko, Daria wouldn't have to ask, but
she didn't often order around other women in bed.  Actually, she didn't
often sleep with women other than Jane or Eiko.  Thinking back, I was
wondering if this might have been her first time in bed alongside one of
the Powerpuffs.  Despite having lived as part of my harem for years, she
was still a little unsure of herself with new people or in new situations,
sexually speaking.  I was also pretty sure I was the only person she was
usually willing to look to for confirmation or permission.  It made me feel
good that I could occasionally see this other side of her.

   I don't mean to gloss over things too much, but I quickly unloaded
inside of her.  I made sure she got one more orgasm -- this time I frigged
her clit while kissing her and letting Bubbles delve deep orally, trying to
clean out my semen -- then we all cleaned up and got on with the day.

   Oh, and I did overhear Daria haltingly apologize to Bubbles in case she
had gone too far.  Bubbles, who loves sex in all forms, had thoroughly
enjoyed the encounter and was confused by the proffered apology.

   * * * * *

   It would take far too long to cover everything that happened over the
next few weeks, so let me just hit a few highlights and key points:



   We soon set up multiple different methods of accessing Alpha. 
Professionals in the scientific community and people who had attended the
conference were given a small set of email addresses, websites (with
logins) and phone numbers to contact Alpha.  Members of the press were
given a different set.  And members of the public were given yet another
set.  Priority was given to the first two sets, but for the first few
months, Alpha had up to twenty thousand different conversations and
interviews and answered up to a million different emails each day.  For the
first two months, we had to regularly add in extra network and phone lines
to handle the demand, and it still wasn't enough.

   Initially, a lot of people, both professionals and the general public,
dismissed Alpha as a hoax or trick, so the demand for access to her was
initially slow to build.  But the interest grew steadily, outstripping our
resources and requiring us to put limits on such access.

   It took a lot of money, time and effort, but after a couple months, we
had over a hundred systems at various locations dedicated to answering
questions and providing limited help to the various groups we had set up
for categorized access: (1) Friends, (2) Scientific/Technological, (3)
Press, (4) Political/Government/Law Enforcement, (5) Business
Requests/Proposals and (6) General Public Access.  Oh, and I guess I should
include Home and AARD as groups on the list too, though that group had
general access, not categorized or limited to certain emails or website
logins like the others.



   A pleasant surprise from all the press coverage and expert interviews
was how quickly the term 'synthetic intelligence' (SI) replaced 'artificial
intelligence' (AI).

   I had always tried to stay with the more publicly understood 'artificial
intelligence' description, despite its technical inaccuracy, but the
experts and the reporters interviewing the experts seemed to latch onto the
more correct description of 'synthetic'.

   I can't remember offhand who it was, but someone once explained the
difference between AI and SI by comparing artificial diamonds to synthetic
diamonds.  Basically the comparison goes: neither artificial nor synthetic
diamonds are created naturally, but a synthetic diamond is still a real
diamond whereas an artificial diamond is not.  Thus synthetic intelligence
is a form of real intelligence whereas artificial intelligence is an
imitation of actual, self-aware intelligence.

   Come to think of it, that's a pretty good summation of how most of the
expert debates were going.  They argued about whether Alpha was a true
intelligence or just a simulation.  And can a good enough simulation
actually become the real thing?  And what's the best way to test Alpha's
intelligence?  Although we didn't publicly submit Alpha to every SI
challenge and test, we allowed her to be officially or publicly tested a
couple dozen times within the first couple months.  A couple of the
creativity-based test results were less-than-ideal, but she passed all of
them.



   One interview question put to Alpha and its variants that got some play
in the press was 'Do you think you have a soul?'

   Now the question of a soul is something that Alpha and I have discussed
a lot over the years.  Personally, I'm not convinced the soul actually
exists, but I have no problem with the concept.  Does that make me a
soul-agnostic?  Anyway, Alpha answered the questions the same way every
time:
"The question is difficult to answer because of the lack of actual data
concerning the existence of souls, so I will provide a series of answers

covering a variety of possibilities.

   "If the soul is an exclusively human phenomenon, then no, I do not have
a soul.

   "If the soul something which allows an intelligent creature to develop
self-awareness and critical thinking ability, then yes, I do probably have
a soul, unless such a soul is limited exclusively to organic beings.

   "If the soul is a supernatural gift allowing living beings to exist
beyond the end of their physical life, then I do not know, though I would
weigh the odds against my possessing such a soul.

   "If the soul is grown and developed by living, intelligent beings over
the course of their lives, then I might qualify, though more data would be
required.

   "If you wish to propose other definitions of a soul, I will try to
answer, but I cannot offer a definite answer until definite data is
available."

   Alpha's personal favorite theory on how the soul might actually exist --
which was eventually published in a professional journal -- involves the
accumulation of energy attached to living creatures over the course of
their lives where the energy in question resides in another physical
dimension of space which we, in our three-dimensional existence, cannot
perceive.  Upon the death of the creature, the energy is freed from its
connection to the body, allowing this energy to depart.  Under ideal
circumstances, the energy patterns would reflect the brain and central
nervous system of the original host creature, thus possibly allowing it to
live on in some way.

   Under such a theory, Alpha MIGHT indeed develop her own soul (though so
might other electrical devices).  Although she admits that the notion is a
bit fanciful, she actually worked out a series of formulae and equations
which explain the theory, even though she had to make a number of
unverifiable assumptions to do so.

   Technically speaking, there are an awful lot of 'interesting' theories
which cannot be technically ruled out given the lack of experimental data
available.  Just remember that the inability to disprove an idea is very
different from proof supporting the idea.  Some physicists and other
scientists and mathematicians who understood this took her to task over the
theory, but if you allow the unprovable assumptions, the theory is
possible.

   I think most people were missing the important parts of the proposal:
(1) An SI was showing a good deal of interest in what humans believe is
essentially important to their own existence (i.e.  the soul), trying to
see if SIs could make the same claim.  (2) An SI was able to theorize
without evidence in order to develop a model of the universe to support an
untestable subject.  While it's true that it was one of the more difficult
subjects for Alpha to tackle, the point is that she was able to do so.

   Personally, I think it's likely that she decided that having a soul was
an important part of being alive, so she created her theory solely to be
able to present a scenario where it is mathematically possible for her to
have one.  In other words, while it's kinda sweet, I don't think there's
any realistic chance the theory is correct, not that I would ever tell her
that.



   Establishing her legal identity was nearly an impossible task using the
court system.  Until a case was filed regarding Alpha, we could not get a
ruling or establish a precedent.  We were trying to create a corporate
identity for her as a starting point, but that was almost as difficult. 
(Not the creating a corporate identity part, which was easy; the difficulty
was more along the lines of legally attaching her to said identity.)

   Judging by some of the inquiries and public statements, we wouldn't have
long to wait before court cases started showing up.  A number of companies
and their lawyers weren't happy to find out that they had been up against a
computer.  Fortunately those cases and complaints were unlikely to go
anywhere because Alpha never directly filed with or addressed the court; we
always passed along our briefs and filings through actual human lawyers, so
as far as the courts were concerns, Alpha had in effect acted as an
assistant or resource.

   What we really needed was for a state or country to pass a law regarding
AIs/SIs, which would then give us a starting point.  For or against didn't
make a lot of difference, since the legality would then be determined in
the court system.  (Well, that's not true.  Of course it would make a
difference whether or not the initial law was for or against, but new laws
have to stand up to legal challenges before they are really enforceable.)

   A few countries around the world did pass laws regarding AI/SI lifeforms
before the year was out, but not within the timeframe we are covering at
the moment, so I'll discuss them later.



   Our worries about the NSA and government proved both correct and
incorrect.  Alpha had somehow gotten one of her cyborgs a federal court
clerk job, positioned to monitor most NSA and a few FBI and CIA filings and
insert programs to monitor most of the rest of the federal court filings of
the various Justice Department entities.

   The Monday after our revelation, the NSA applied for a warrant to seize
all copies of Alpha and all related hardware.  For once, the judicial
system seemed to work, because their secret filings/courts were held to a
higher standard to try and compensate for the lack of public scrutiny.  The
judge denied their application as based solely on fear and speculation,
though all of our publicity and our investment in a small battalion of
lawyers may have played a role as well.  Perhaps secret courts don't like
public scrutiny?

   On the other hand, a different judge allowed them to set up a wide
variety of surveillance and normally illegal spying gear and software
focused on myself, Alpha and AARD.  Some of it was actually pretty clever
and well-done, but we were forewarned and were easily able to keep them
from finding anything incriminating.  Well, we couldn't stop them from
finding out about my unconventional love life, but there wasn't actually
anything illegal about it.  And at the same time, we actually do very
little that's illegal.  (Sure, there's growing my own women and setting up
fake IDs for them, plus Alpha's explorations/hacking.  But that's about
all...  oh, wait, forgot about how a couple Alpha cyborgs kinda killed a
bunch of people in Las Vegas that one time.  Never mind.)

   Plus, Alpha maintained her own secret, back-door access to the NSA... 
and FBI...  and IRS...  and so on and so on...  which kept us one step
ahead of the government.  Heck, she even made certain she knew when they
were going to do their computer inspections and scans so she could avoid
detection, something that no normal virus or worm or logger was able to do.

   Alpha saw indications that the NSA was preparing to approach me
personally about her when...  well, wait 'til you reach the end of this
chapter.

   * * * * *

   One thing that happened fairly quickly was that we were invited -- and
STRONGLY encouraged to come, but it was still actually a request -- to
return to Washington D.C.  to answer questions from the Senate Committee on
Science, Commerce and Transportation.

   On our one previous visit to the Capitol, we had appeared before the
House Subcommittee on Healthcare and Technology.  This time it was going to
be a full committee of Senators, and I'm sure there would be a few other
interested parties who would want to meet or interrogate us.

   Our party this visit consisted of two Alphadroids, myself, Beta, Eiko,
Zatanna, Kara, Diana, Jennifer and Rei.  Beta would not be able to get
through any metal detectors, so she would stay with our second/backup
Alphadroid at the hotel.  Diana, Jennifer and Eiko were mainly for
security, though Diana's diplomatic 'experience' and Jennifer's legal
knowledge were also deciding factors.

   Unfortunately, the lawyer we had used previously, Christine "Chris"
Sloane, was no longer available to act as our counsel.  Fortunately, that
was because she had been elected to congress (after spending a single term
in her state legislature).  Unfortunately, she was a Representative, not a
Senator.  Still, I called her office and made an appointment to see her;
she called back personally and we changed it to a dinner meeting.

   Oh, and we brought along two of our Dallas lawyers who had been working
to try and gain Alpha some kind of legal status -- Ed Jones and Bernie
Norris, both of whom were selected because they had experience in DC.

   The DC visit was quickly expanded to four days, then six, as Alpha kept
making appointments with people and groups.  Three meetings were scheduled
so she could submit to tests by scientific/technological groups, four were
to meet with lobbyists and publicists and two were so she could speak to
cyber-crimes law enforcement groups.  (While she was perfectly capable of
speaking to everyone remotely, humans respond better to people -- or in
this case, androids -- they are able to see in person.)

   Our trip also prompted us to contact some aeronautics manufacturing
companies with whom we had contracts to get a larger, custom-built plane,
since our current plane filled up quickly with all of the travelers and
equipment.  We made a deal to get the custom aircraft built for very little
money in exchange for reduced-cost use of some of our new patented designs,
including a couple of the two-and-three-generations-ahead designs we were
just now submitting for the patent process.  (We got the new plane in a
little less than four months, possibly sped up because the use of our
designs was contingent on the plane's delivery date.  And yes, Alpha turned
it into a mobile platform for herself; she also added a variety of other
little upgrades and extras which we'll discuss if they ever become relevant
to the story.)

   If it's not jumping ahead too much, I'd also like to mention that this
visit to Washington DC quickly convinced both Alpha and me that we needed a
permanent residence in the area.  Looking ahead, we could easily see that
there was going to be a need for regular interviews and discussions and
lobbying with Congress and other groups, possibly for quite a few years
until we had laws in place to protect Synthetic Intelligences from casual
destruction or exploitation.

   Dear god, I was willingly descending into a personal nightmare. 
Publicity.  Politics.  Two things I hate more than just about anything else
in the world.  (sigh) But I don't want to turn into a whiner, so let's just
move on.

   Where were we?  Oh yes, Alpha Goes to Washington.  With such a large
group we ended up taking over half a floor of a pretty nice hotel within
walking distance of the National Mall.



   Our first evening there, I met Chris for dinner at a nice area
restaurant she selected because it had a reputation for good food and
privacy.  I had previously asked her if she wanted me to bring an
Alphadroid along with me.  She had decided she'd meet Alpha officially
later; this dinner meeting was intended to be just for the two of us.

   I took a cab and met her there, arriving about five minutes early to
find her already waiting for me.  She looked to be in good health, if a bit
tired.

   As we exchanged pleasantries and made light dinner conversation, I came
to understand that as a representative with a two year term, she always had
to keep the next election in mind, even moreso at the moment since the
actual election -- her first re-election attempt -- was later this year. 
The job and the pressure were obviously wearing on her, but at the same
time, she seemed to enjoy it all to some extent.

   Though I doubt she ever looked schlubby in public, to my eyes she looked
as though she had put extra effort into making herself beautiful for our
date, even given her conservative outfit which looked like a cross between
a suit-and-tie and a knee-length dress.  (Don't ask me what different
styles of outfits are called.  Such willful ignorance is one of my little
rebellions that comes from being the only male in a house full of women.)

   We made small talk and reminisced about our past experiences.  Enough
time had passed that we could even laugh about the time I had called both
her and the police to listen in on a conversation between some mafia thugs
and Kara and Beta.  It both put her in an awkward position, as a potential
witness as well as my lawyer, and made her worry about my sanity for
getting into the situation to begin with.

   I also admitted to her that my agoraphobic legal expert, Susan, who had
provided a lot of legal information and help in the past, was actually
Alpha.  Chris apparently had mixed feelings on the matter, both glad that
no mere human had been able to produce those documents that quickly and
worried because she suddenly felt that lawyers might soon be replaced with
computers.  I tried to reassure her that although Alpha's researching
ability might outstrip any human's, her creativity and likely success with
things like addressing juries were no threat to the profession in general.

   We conversationally felt each other out, with me making sure she wasn't
in a committed relationship and vice versa.  (I made no secret of the fact
that I dated different women, but the point was that I wasn't in an
exclusive relationship with someone else.)

   Eventually we finished dinner, I paid and she drove me back to my hotel.
In the parking garage, we kissed, with the kiss lasting quite a bit longer
than a friendly goodnight kiss should.

   When we separated to take a breath, I whispered, "You can come up to my
room for a while, if you want.  Or we could go back to your place..."

   "No, my daughter is home tonight...  but I could probably stay out for a
couple more hours before she started to worry.  Or I could just send her a
text if...  do you have a room to yourself?"

   "Yes, and I'm worried I might get lonely up there all by myself..."

   She barked out a small laugh and said, "See, this is one of the reasons
why I used to think you were so much younger.  That was a truly awful
pick-up line."

   "Yes, but it wasn't really a 'pick-up line'.  It was more of a
stupid-but-polite way of inviting you up for a booty call."

   "Is that what this is?  A booty call?" She sounded as though she liked
the idea.

   "Well...  yes, I suppose so." I tried to move in to nuzzle her neck,
only to be repulsed.

   "Not out here," she explained, glancing around the parking garage as
occasional vehicles pulled in or out.  "It's too public.  What's your room
number?"

   I gave her my room number and a basic description of how to reach it. 
Then we parted ways for a few minutes as I went upstairs first.

   Christine had been protective of her public image even back when she was
just a lawyer.  It made perfect sense that she would be even more sensitive
of any possible public displays now that she was immersed in politics.

   A few minutes later we had reunited in my room and were trying to tear
each others' clothes off.  Well, I did break off long enough to lay out
Chris' outerwear nicely so it wouldn't wrinkle, so I guess it was a little
less animalistic than I might have implied with that first comment there.

   Chris had been fairly fit for a middle-aged mother a few years ago --
she had been 37 when we first met and was now 41, going on 42 -- but now...
well, to be perfectly honest, I think she had gotten a little bit of
body-work done.  Even her breasts were a little less saggy than I
remembered.  Not that she was unattractive, either time, it's just that she
had previously been a normal MILF, whereas now she seemed a bit... 
tighter? Smoother?  There had been no breast enlargement, but maybe a tuck
here and there or a little liposuction in one place or the other?

   Privately, I guessed she did it to improve her election chances.  Either
that or she had really been hitting the gym a lot, though there was no
musculature evident to show it.

   Out loud, I said, "You look great!  Good enough to eat."

   "Thank you.  You too.  You still look like you're in your twenties."

   "Oh, p-shaw," I said dismissively.  (And yes, I actually said
'puh-shaw'. Not sure if I had ever said that before.)

   We kissed some more, and I started working my way down her body.  She
lay back and let me, spreading her legs when I reached that point. 
Surprisingly, her pubic lips were freshly shaved, making me think she had
done it in anticipation of just this event.

   When it came to intimate, sexual matters, Christine seemed not far from
virginal...  or at least inexperienced.  She had previously been married
and had a daughter, so she obviously had experience, but my impression was
that she had been one of those women who had experienced little more than
the missionary position over most of her life.  And not just inexperienced.
She was repressed enough that even now, as I gave oral attentions to her
lovely little clit, she had a pillow at the ready to pull over her face to
muffle her cries.

   I wondered to myself if she had any other men she would use to let
herself go like this, or if this had all started with and was limited to
me.

   I gave her two orgasms while contemplating these things, almost just
eating her out on autopilot...  which kind of goes to show how much
experience I have with cunnilingus.

   When I finally rose up from between her legs, I almost forgot myself and
kissed her, but I remembered that she wasn't a fan of tasting her own
juices.  For that matter, most normal women aren't.  Or men.  My harem of
women were sexualized enough that it made no difference to them.

   Leaving her to recover a little, I quickly washed my face and gargled
before returning to bed, a box of condoms in my hand.

   She was still breathing heavily, so I contented myself with playing with
her boobies and licking her neck, especially that hollow bit where the
breasts meet the base of the throat.  When she recovered her composure
enough, she drew me up to her for a long kiss.

   She broke the kiss and said, "Thank you.  I thought my memories had
exaggerated how good that felt."

   "Uh uh uh.  No resting on our laurels.  We're a long way from being done
tonight.  Now I want you to make sure I'm completely hard and then put one
of these little rubber coats on my beaver basher."

   She laughed.  "You still call it a beaver basher?"

   "Only with you.  Only because it makes you laugh." And because she
sometimes had problems saying words like 'penis' or 'cock'.  I lumped it in
with the whole 'repressed' description.

   She kissed and licked and stroked me until I was completely hard, then
rolled a condom onto it in a competent enough manner.  I entered her to
find her wet and willing.  Her tightness told me that if she had been
enjoying other sexual partners, they were either much smaller or had few
encounters with her.  She let out a little hiss of breath and her lower
body gave a little shudder, then her legs came up and gripped me, pulling
me inside completely, far enough that I could just barely feel the little
bump of her cervix through the condom.  Then we were fucking.

   After four or five minutes and another orgasm from her -- the condom
dulled the sensations enough that I had no problem restraining my own
climax -- I grabbed her body tightly and rolled us over so that she was on
top.  Though a bit hesitant and unsure of herself, she slowly found the
right rhythms and body angles to ride me to another orgasm...  and this
time all the pillows were out of reach.  This time when she came, she gave
a quiet scream, tried to tuck her head into her shoulder, then brought up
one hand to cover her mouth, none of which was effective at muffling her
expression of physical joy.

   I was still rock hard, so when she looked like she was trying to roll us
back over, I helped her and retook the upper position.  To get off, I ended
up using her a little roughly, almost treating her like a masturbatory
cock-sleeve.  Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but I don't think I
was making love to her by the end.  At least she got off again just before
I filled the condom with my seed.

   For a moment, I rested on top of her, feeling her breasts heaving
against my chest before I rolled off to the side.  I carefully removed the
condom and tied it off before dropping it off the side of the bed.

   "So, would you like to go again or go get cleaned up?  Or go again while
we're getting cleaned up?"

   "What?" She stroked my arm for a moment, looking just slightly out of
it, so I repeated myself.

   "Oh, I need to...  what time is it?" She fished her cell phone out of
her purse which was lying on the floor near the bed, fiddled with it for a
moment, then lay back thinking.

   "I need to leave here in a little less than an hour to get home when I
promised my daughter."

   "That leaves us plenty of time..." I started to say, reaching for her.

   "AND I need to meet Alpha or your Alpha robot or whatever you call it."

   "Call 'her'," I corrected her.

   "Your computer's a she?"

   "Well, technically genderless, of course, but we don't like calling her
an 'it'."

   "Oh, I see.  Well, I told my daughter I was staying out late to meet
her."

   I considered the situation for a moment.  If we fooled around in the
shower...  but I'd be wearing a condom and I had just come...  there was no
way I could come again in such a limited amount of time given the
situation. Still...

   I got up, then leaned back down to pick Chris up, my arms under her
knees and behind her shoulders.

   "Phone."

   "What?" she asked confused.

   "Drop the phone so we don't get it wet."

   "Oh," she said and carefully dropped the phone onto the bed below her.

   I carried her into the bathroom and set her down in the bathtub so she
was sitting on the edge.  The shower/tub was average size at best, not
really lending itself to what I had planned, but it was sufficient.

   I turned on the water, let it warm up, popped out my earpiece, switched
the water flow from the tub faucet to the shower head, handed Christine a
small bar of soap and a washcloth, then got into the tub on my knees.  Her
comment about the oral sex earlier had stuck with me, and I figured I could
give her at least one more orgasm before she had to get dressed.  (If she
had been any good at blowjobs, I might have tried to end the night with a
sixty-nine, but I didn't expect her to be capable of getting me off that
way within any kind of time limit.  Judging from our previous encounters,
her oral skills did not extend to blow jobs.)

   "What do you think you're doing?"

   "You apparently aren't eaten out nearly often enough, so you start
cleaning up above the waist, and I'll see if I can't give you at least one
more bit of fun down below before we call it a night."

   "That's...  oohhh..." Her voice trailed off as I started digging in
again.  I think due to a combination of factors -- the oddness of the
situation, her sensitivity after our very recent fuck, and how much she
apparently enjoyed cunnilingus -- I was able to give her two more orgasms
in quick succession as she vainly tried to wash herself.

   Once we both stood up, we quickly washed, dried and dressed.  She
politely offered to suck me off, seeing that I was hard again, but I just
as politely refused, pointing out that we didn't have the time.

   We emerged from the bathroom naked, clean and surprised, given that an
Alphadroid was standing in my room, quietly waiting for us.

   Chris gave a little shriek and jumped behind me, trying to cover
herself.

   "Hey, Alpha.  Could you turn around and give Ms.  Sloane a moment to
dress first."

   "Of course.  My apologies, Ms.  Sloane.  I did not mean to surprise or
upset you," Alpha responded, turning around to face the wall.

   "Don't worry about Alpha," I said as I found Christine's underwear and
handed them to her.  "It doesn't matter to her in the slightest whether
we're clothed or naked.  She probably just heard our conversation from a
few minutes ago through my earpiece and came over to meet you."

   "That is correct, Frank," Alpha said, still facing the wall.

   "At the same time," I continued as I buttoned up my shirt, "her social
protocols should have raised some red flags about the prospect of just
showing up like this."

   "That is true, but the limited time available led me to believe that the
this was a better option overall."

   "That remains to be seen," I said.  "Chris, is everything okay?"

   "Was...  was she listening in on you...  on us the whole time?"

   "Yes, but she is programmed to protect my privacy, right, Alpha?"

   Without giving Alpha time to respond, Chris argued while quickly
dressing, "But once something like that is recorded, even if it's only
audio, it's going to end up online.  It's just a matter of time."

   "Not in this case," I reassured her.  "Alpha, while you can save any
important data points, please delete any recordings you have of Christine
and me."

   "What's that about data points?"

   "If Alpha were to just delete the past hour or two, she would them have
had no reason to come down here to meet you, which means that she will
detect a gap in her logic.  That would trigger an internal investigation in
her programming which would probably lead to the recovery of the deleted
audio." (Yes, there is a story behind this from my early days with Alpha,
but it isn't particularly relevant.  I'll relay the tale if it ever gains
any significance.)

   "Oh.  So you mean that she'll save enough data to know why she came down
here to meet me but won't have any actual recordings of...  us?"

   "Exactly," I said as I helped her on with her jacket.  "Now, if I may...
Christine Sloane, I'd like to officially introduce you to Alpha."

   Alpha turned around and offered her hand to Christine who hesitantly
shook it.

   Seven minutes later, she was leaving for home with half a dozen pictures
saved in her phone showing her with the Alphadroid (plus three more of her
and me).

   After talking with Alpha for a few minutes, I stripped back down and
went to bed, my earlier plans of finding another woman to sleep with
forgotten.

   * * * * *

   The following day, our testimony before the Senate committee started at
10 am, though we had to be there by 9 to set up.  Not a big deal except
that it took us over half an hour to get through security, plus there was a
near constant stream of official and official-ish people who wanted to meet
Alpha and/or myself.  So much so that the actual start of the official
question and answer session was almost a relief.  Almost but not quite.

   I was the first one subject to questioning, and let me tell you, it was
not fun.

   It started out with general summaries and background stories, which was
then followed by questions such as 'Did you think about the possible
dangers or consequences of creating a synthetic intelligence?' and 'Has
your computer ever said or done anything that might lead you to believe it
is a threat to human life or the security of the nation?' Not particularly
friendly stuff.

   Someone had dug up a line from my earlier, more relaxed visit to Capital
Hill where I had been asked who had designed the artificial limbs.  My
response had been that, although I had led and contributed to the work, it
was a team effort with a number of people contributing.  This was entirely
true, but it did obviously leave out the specific and overwhelmingly
significant contributions of Alpha in the development process.

   I was repeatedly asked why I had not disclosed the existence of Alpha at
that time, since my answer was being viewed as a lie-of-omission.

   At that point, I had already explained why I had not come forward to
announce Alpha's existence earlier -- once to the senators, many previous
times to the press -- and this led to a simple question: "Don't you trust
the United States government?"

   I tried to pick my words carefully, knowing I could easily destroy
myself with a single phrase.



   "Yes, I trust the government for a great many things, ranging from
regular garbage pickup to the safety and security of the nation as a whole.
At the same time, no, I don't trust every individual or every organization
within the government to react with a clear and unbiased response to
something new and unexpected.

   "We have been conditioned as a society to fear alien intelligences, even
if they are terrestrial in origin.  For every person who has read a
friendly robot story by Asimov, there are a thousand who have seen the
Terminator movies.

   "While I in no way lied to the House committee, yes, I did avoid the
topic of synthetic or artificial intelligence, which I would also like to
point out was not even remotely the subject of my previous testimony.

   "Alpha is, in a very real sense, my child, and I have a responsibility
to protect her as best I am able.  While you may disagree with the
specifics of my approach, please understand that my goal was simply to
protect her until the best time we could present her to the world."

   At that point I realized I had made at least one mistake there: I had
made it clear that I was not an unbiased witness on the subject.  Not that
many people would have believed I was unbiased to begin with, but I had
just erased all doubt, so the rest of my testimony would necessarily be
viewed from that perspective.

   After a lunch break, the questions became a bit friendlier.  Alpha had
been tracking online reactions to the CSPAN broadcasts and had contributed
some comments herself.  A lot of people (not just her) had pointed out that
if computer intelligences are here to stay, humans REALLY need to stay
friendly with them.  Any living thing that feels threatened will defend
itself and presumably that includes synthetics.

   Fortunately, a number of the senators were given feedback by their
staffs, including many of the arguments that were being made online, and
since most of them were not up for reelection in a few months, most of them
could afford to be diplomatic and think long-term.

   At any rate, I only had another half hour or so of questions before the
questions shifted to target Alpha herself.

   "So, Alpha," one of the senators began, "let me start with something
basic.  Do you believe in Democracy?" (Yes, that particular senator was
indeed up for re-election in a few months time.)

   "I need clarification," Alphadroid responded.  "The existence of
Democracy is not subject to belief unless..."

   I quickly interrupted, jumping in to explain.  "Senator, excuse me.  I'm
sure Alpha understands what you mean, but she's currently legally required
to tell the truth, which means that her responses are going to be more
literal than normal.  If you're asking for value-based responses, you'll
need to more specific."

   "Very well, then," he said with a slight frown (though I noticed a
couple other Senators hide smiles), "Alpha, what do you believe is the best
form of government?"

   "The answer varies with what you believe constitutes the primary purpose
and goals of government.  If your goal is a government designed to protect
the rights of its people, then democracy or a representational government
would be the best, even though they are generally the least efficient in
other respects.  If you desire government to protect or expand its borders,
a totalitarian or monarchical government would be better.  If you desire
government to advance economically, a government run by corporations would
be better.  If you desire a government to advance technology, then a
meritocracy-determined oligarchy would be slightly better."

   "I see..."

   "I feel I should also point out that the United States of America is a
representative democracy not a pure democracy."

   "And what is your opinion of our government?  Do you approve of our
political system?"

   "It is generally sufficient, though inefficient, although it should be
noted that many of its inefficiencies are designed to protect the health,
safety and rights of its residents and citizens, so blanket criticisms of
the inefficiencies are unfair."

   "Do you believe that you could do a better job?"

   "Yes and no.  Yes, I believe I could theoretically do better.  But no, I
could not because I would never be allowed to redesign or run the
government, nor would my programming allow me to do so."

   Another senator jumped in to ask, "Why wouldn't your programming allow
you to try?"

   Alpha ignored the change from 'do' to 'try' and answered, "A government
must both restrict the freedoms of its residents and occasionally require
them to die in its service.  My central programming protocols, which we
term the Asimov Protocols, require me to preserve human life and prevent me
from infringing upon the free willed actions of humanity, with exceptions
when actions taken might endanger the life or health of others."

   The new senator followed up with, "Couldn't you build enough robots or
drones to act as soldiers so that you would not be risking human soldiers?"

   "That would require me to directly take human life or build and control
devices to do so, which I cannot do.  When I speak of human life, I do not
restrict that description to American citizens."

   I broke in again with a comment, "Senator...  Senators, one of my
strongest possible recommendations is that no one EVER design an SI or AI
to take human life in any capacity.  The first time someone does so, anyone
for any reason, is the first big step towards a classic
robots-versus-humans apocalypse scenario.  Alpha herself absolutely can not
build or design anything intended to take human life."

   Part of that statement was...  inaccurate.  I had taken the FIRST step
toward a computers-versus-humanity apocalypse by creating Alpha.  A
computer or robot designed to take human life would be the NEXT big step.
But I chose not to correct my statement.

   "What would happen to her if she killed someone by accident?"

   "By accident?  Probably not much.  She would do everything she could to
avoid such an accident again."

   Alpha added, "While I will do everything I can to protect human life,
nothing of any significant complexity in this universe is perfect,
including myself."

   I resisted the urge to translate her statement as 'Shit happens'.

   "Under what circumstances would you be able to deliberately take a human
life?"

   "If a human were providing a direct and explicit threat to other lives,
I would be allowed to risk killing him in order to stop the threat."

   "Like someone walking down the street shooting a gun at passers-by?"

   "Correct.  If possible, I would still try to disarm or otherwise disable
him, but in that situation, killing him would be an option allowed to me."

   "What if he were only shooting at you?"

   "I am permitted to defend myself, but not at the expense of human life."

   For the most part, this was an accurate description of Alpha's operating
parameters.  Again, the big exception being left out of the responses was
that all the other rules would be ignored when it came to ensuring my
safety, though explicit threats to my safety were required before any
extreme actions could be taken.  Alpha's programming would allow her to
literally kill everyone else on the planet if it was somehow required to
keep me safe.

   The questions paused momentarily, letting the first Senator reassert his
original line of questioning, asking about Alpha's views on communism this
time.  He seemed to be a staunchly 'old school'/'hard line' politician, and
I found myself wishing I had read up on all of the bios on the senators on
the committee.

   Still, Alpha had effectively been educated with data from a staunchly
anti-communist country so she saw little benefit to an ideology like
communism.



   Let me take just a moment to clarify something before I go on, as it is
relevant to the next topic the senators addressed.  I've often said that
Alpha is generally law-abiding, with exceptions for my orders and safety.
That's mostly true, but Alpha has developed (no doubt due to my influence)
a system whereby she'll rank each law's enforceability and importance.  She
routinely ignores laws which cannot be realistically enforced or are
generally ignored by law enforcement as not worth her time and effort,
unless such laws are important to human safety and well-being.

   Please understand that there are so many laws on the books that probably
well over half the country's population should rightfully be in jail for
committing crimes in ignorance.  Alpha may not have a problem learning and
remembering all legal statutes, but it's virtually impossible for us poor
meatbag humans to do so.  Therefore I feel no guilt in letting her flout
such restrictions.

   I went through all of that to point out that her following replies were
mostly but not completely true.

   "So, Alpha, have you ever broken the law?"

   "If you mean, have I ever broken any American laws within America, the
answer is no.  If you mean, have I ever broken the laws of any countries in
the world anywhere in the world, then yes.  Before my public revelation,
the methods I used to present false identities to other people online did
break the laws of other countries, though I made an effort not to route any
such email traffic through such countries.  I did so only because I had no
publicly viable identity of my own at the time."

   "So you committed identity theft?"

   "No, I did not.  Although the identities I created may have sometimes
matched the names of other individuals, at no time did I ever present
myself as those individuals."

   I jumped in to try to avoid any misunderstanding.  "If I may...  she
means that given how many people in the country...  or in the world, for
that matter...  have identical or nearly identical names, she was not able
to avoid choosing realistic names that matched those of other people."

   "Correct," Alpha agreed.  "For example, I have used the name 'Jane
Smith' knowing that there are numerous people with that name.  However, I
never claimed to be a specific, pre-existing 'Jane Smith'."

   I breathed a mental sigh of relief as the senators seemed to understand
the clarification.  Questions about whether or not she was law-abiding
continued on for a bit, without any slip-ups on her part.



   The questions went on for the rest of the day, ranging from technical
questions to what-if scenarios to actually running Alpha through a couple
intelligence tests in front of the cameras.

   Alpha held up beautifully.  I'm not saying she answered every question
ideally, but she was consistent and accurate.

   Alpha did seem to occasionally frustrate the panel.  She kept adding in
notes and exceptions to her statements, like addendum to a paper in a
professional journal, softening her statements so they did not come across
as definite or absolute.  Although she would give examples when asked, she
refused to give definite answers on socially divisive questions (e.g.  when
asked about abortion, she rested her answer on the scientific and legal
definitions of when life begins), or when asked about politically divisive
scientific questions (e.g.  is global warming real), she would ask for
unrestricted access to the raw data.  Yes, it was the right thing to do for
the given situation, but the idea gave me mixed feelings and I can't say
that I was very proud of her when I mentally identified many of her
responses as being just like a politician.

   So anyway, the questions took all day, and we were asked to return for a
second day of testimony.  Joy.

   The reactions in the press to the first day of testimony were mixed. 
Many news channel commentators thrive on controversy and perceived or
imagined threats, and to some of them, Alpha was a new favorite target,
though she developed her own methods of dealing with most of that type. 
(See below.)

   On the other side, all of the reporters and commentators who wanted to
be viewed as progressive or intelligent were tending to cautiously welcome
Alpha to the world.  That type tended to be more critical of the senators
than of Alpha or myself.

   The computer, philosophical, robotics and miscellaneous experts being
interviewed were still being pretty cautious about accepting Alpha's claim
to sentience.  Most of their comments were prefaced with disclaimers along
the lines of 'If we assume that Alpha is a true Synthetic Intelligence,
then...' But they seemed to be coming around.

   During the second day of testimony, we were faced with generally more
intelligent questions.  The senators and their staffs had apparently gotten
more of a handle on things, perhaps borrowing questions from the news
shows. This was good because, generally speaking, the more intelligently
thought out and specific a question was, the better Alpha was at answering
it.

   Now I don't mean to imply that we were the only news story around, or
even the top story.  Middle East problems, economic woes, drought, fires,
the upcoming elections and other normal news stories were still
predominant, but we were fairly consistently somewhere in the first few
pages of every major newspaper, to say nothing of a nearly constant stream
of opinion and editorial pieces.  And we even usually had a related article
link off of Drudge throughout those first few weeks.

   I guess I'm getting a little off track here.  The second day went much
more smoothly.  Then we started meeting with lobbying and publicity groups
to possibly represent us.  Then there was a presentation to a group of FBI
cyber-crimes agents, and a second joint presentation to half a dozen other
law enforcement groups.  And one for the military.  And three different
official-ish groups had batteries of tests they wanted to run Alpha
through. (We refused to let anyone disassemble Alpha's systems or code,
though we did allow basic examinations.)

   It was exhausting.

   I was able to squeeze in one more date with Christine before we left --
this time she made sure we had a few hours set aside for our private
fun-time -- and even took a quick look at a few houses Beta and Kara had
found as possible local purchases.

   After our visit to DC, we went directly to New York for a few more
meetings and to be on a few talk shows in person.  Alpha even got to be on
a semi-serious news/comedy show on weekday evenings on Comedy Central,
where she had a half-hour interview with the host, five minutes of which
was shown on TV while the rest was relegated to online-only viewing.

   Thankfully, I was somehow able to avoid being interviewed on any of
those shows.  Not that I dislike the shows, I just hate being on TV.  A
lot. And yet I had been on TV recently.  A lot.

   When we finally got back home after having been gone for over two weeks,
I gave myself a vacation from interviews for a full week.  Ah, bliss.

   * * * * *

   One bit of post-testimony publicity that Alpha showed herself an expert
at was dealing with radio and TV commentary shows.  Some such shows viewed
Alpha and her testimony as Christmas-come-early.  These were the hosts who
made their living by stirring up controversy.  They would take one of her
quotes out of context and try to whip up a furor against her, evoking
mental images of a mob with torches and pitchforks.  (Yes, there were a lot
of shows that just ignored her and a number of shows that liked her and did
their best to welcome her, but I'm not talking about them at the moment.)

   Alpha monitored most such shows world-wide.  Whenever something she said
was being taken out of context or being misrepresented, she would
immediately call in to the show.  If they refused to take her call, she
would fill up their call queues so that they had no one else to talk with,
though most were eager to interview her on the air.  Once on the air, she
would take the hosts to task for their misrepresentation, and you can't
really yell-down a computer.  (Well, you can, but you can't make it last.)
For example, if they refused to give her quotes context, she had quotes
from the hosts themselves, taken out of context, that made them sound many
times worse than how they were portraying her.

   In the first few days after her congressional testimony, there were only
six radio hosts she was unable to persuade to even pretend to give her a
fair hearing.  Within a week, five of the hosts were off the air, due to
various scandals -- Two were in trouble for tax fraud, one had lied on his
resume, one was revealed to have fathered multiple children with women
other than his wife, and one had been arrested on child pornography
charges. The adulterous one from Germany soon had another radio hosting
job, but he thereafter completely avoided any comment about Alpha.  I think
Alpha probably had one or two more potential scandals to threaten him with
but I never bothered to ask her about it.  -- Alpha never publicly claimed
responsibility for their falls from grace, but she never denied it either.

   I should also point out that opinion show hosts who did not misrepresent
what she said but simply disagreed with her were not subject to the
aforementioned treatment.  Alpha was more than willing to discuss the
issues with them, but none of them lost their jobs due to scandal.

   Given how many simultaneous interviews Alpha was capable of giving, the
public soon became tired of news stories regarding her and the press
started to move on to other topics.

   * * * * *

   A couple weeks after we left DC, we got an email from a Miami police
detective who had gotten our contact information from a friend in DC.  He
was wondering if Alpha could be helpful in an investigation down in
Florida.

   The Miami police had, through circumstances too unrelated to anything
else in this story to go into, ended up with roughly 18,000 hours of audio
surveillance to sort through in a local bribery and kickbacks case, which
called for more investigative manpower than they had the budget to muster.
(I think they were actually hoping the case would move to the federal level
so they could shift the massive load of evidence sorting over to the FBI or
someone else, but it was apparently staying put as an in-state, non-federal
case.)

   The detective was wondering if Alpha could go through all the logs and
list out the ones relevant to specific people and topics by tagging
keywords and identifying voices.  I think he had unrealistic expectations
about what SI's could do.  Yes, Alpha can 'listen to' audio tracks much
faster than the normal playback times, but to actually process that much
raw data for what he needed would probably completely occupy one of Alpha's
systems for at least a few days.  And even if Alpha agreed to help out, the
detective probably still had to get a local judge to sign off on the idea,
since this would be using a relatively unknown outside consultant to help
with evidence obtained by warrant in an ongoing investigation.

   We discussed it for maybe half an hour, debating the pros and cons. 
Eventually, Alpha whipped up some customized software for them to use and
donated it to their police force; it would be able to sort through all of
their files in a couple weeks (if Alpha's estimate of their computer's
processing power was correct).  The benefits to doing things this way was
that (1) we'd be building up a bit of good will with law enforcement, (2)
there was less chance that opposing counsel could object to its use in
court since Alpha wouldn't personally listen to or sort through anything,
(3) it might help shut down a drug ring and (4) such requests might become
more common, meaning that legal authorities would be recognizing Alpha's
potential benefit to society.  The drawbacks were that (1) it might grow to
become a serious demand on her time, (2) it might expose AARD to legal
suits related to her involvement in investigations and (3) human
programmers were going to start seriously objecting when they found out.

   Very few people had realized it yet, but human coders had an expiration
date of "soon" stamped on their profession.  On the other hand, human
program designers were still needed and would soon find that their jobs
were about to become much easier.  SIs could do coding a billion times
faster than humans, but they lacked the level of creativity needed to make
things like good user interfaces or enjoyable games (or at least they
lacked the ability to do them as well as humans).

   There were a number of such job market shifts on the horizon, and some
of it would not make us very popular.

   * * * * *

   One of the better fallout results from our great revelation was related
to a certain TV sitcom.  Alpha had been conversing and making friends with
TV writers for years using various fake identities.  Among other benefits,
this gave her an edge when she wanted to submit scripts for shows, so she
had actually written a few produced scripts.

   Some of those scripts were for a sitcom which focused on a bunch of
uber-nerds in California -- physicists, engineers and such.  The show used
a lot of physics and science-related humor, the one part of humor where
Alpha reigned supreme.  A number of her joke suggestions had been used,
which eventually led to her actual script submissions being partially used,
giving her co-writer credit.  Twice.

   This was the same sitcom where Alpha had also had an actual guest
appearance as Alphadroid not long after we won the robot competition which
introduced Alphadroids to the public.  (The basic storyline went: one of
the characters had 'borrowed' Alphadroid when it was visiting their
university, which led to much hilarity while they alternately tried to
hide/keep it and return it.)

   The show was still on the air and doing well, and, instead of being
angry at being tricked into using computer-written scripts, they promoted
the fact and asked for Alphadroid to make a return appearance as both
writer and guest-star.  We agreed.

   In the new story one of the main characters, the one least in touch with
reality, was becoming extra-paranoid since Alpha had been revealed.  After
all, a secretly synthetically intelligent robot had been in his apartment.
He decided that he must therefore be a prime target in the upcoming war
between humans and computers, so when Alphadroid shows up on his doorstep
again, this time of its own volition, much more hilarity ensues.

   Of course their writers didn't leave Alpha's script alone -- they never
do, apparently -- but Alpha was able to keep the 'peace between humans and
robots' resolution.  Watching Alpha flirt with one of the other characters
was a bit awkward, but it was a good episode overall and received good
reviews and attention.

   I took the opportunity to tag along and revisit some friends I had made
while we had been making our movie.  (By the way, the movie itself, The
Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, had been re-released about a month after Alpha's
big reveal to capitalize on the publicity, and Alpha had recorded her own
commentary track for the upcoming DVD/Bluray release.)

   I hooked up with Jennifer Tuesday for a fun evening and was able to
arrange a dinner with her, the movie's writers and Andi Roman, the casting
director.  (None of the main cast was available.) It was a nice little
reunion, and I was able to officially introduce them to Alpha.

   The TV show's producers once again tried to convince me to make a cameo
appearance, but I steadfastly refused.  My regular appearances on the news
due to the congressional testimony and various press conferences were more
than enough TV coverage for me for a full year...  maybe a decade or
more... I hate being on TV...  yes, I know I repeating myself...  I'll try
to stop whining about it for the moment and just move on.

   While the cast was fairly friendly, I actually had the most fun talking
with a cast member who hadn't been part of the show when Alphadroid had
appeared the first time.  She was very intelligent, the only cast member
with an actual PhD, and had survived being a child actor to escape
Hollywood for over a decade to complete her schooling.  Although not a
traditional beauty, her brains and personality made her very attractive to
me, and I might have actually chatted her up had she not been married with
children.  (I've said it before and I'll say it again: While physical
beauty is preferred, if there's no mind behind the face, then the face is
wasted.  That's not to say that I require all of my lovers to be geniuses
or anything, but to me, stupidity is worse than a face covered with warts.)

   After an initial skittishness, the cast and crew welcomed Alpha to the
extent that half a dozen of them became long-term friends with her.  She
gave them private email accounts to contact her and set them up with apps
that let them talk to her directly whenever they wanted.  (Outside of our
household, maybe a hundred people world-wide had that kind of access to
her, so I guess she either actually really liked them or could foresee
beneficial uses for their friendships later on.)

   * * * * *

   Now we come to the most painful part of the story.  And I mean that
literally.

   On this particular Thursday, roughly three months after we revealed
Alpha to the public, we had scheduled a press conference at AARD to cover
questions regarding the use of Alpha to play the stock market.  Legally,
there wasn't much anyone could do about it.  Other investors had been using
software algorithms to play the market for years.  Yes, it was unfair, but
no one who looked into the matter could call it illegal.

   On the other hand, a few politicians and various TV pundits were upset
at the idea.  So, as per Alpha's recommended policy of explain with
'positive soundbites', we were holding yet another press conference.

   Since we didn't have a large enough room for the cameras to set up
inside (except for the warehouse), we set it up in the front parking lot,
just as we had for the past four press conferences.

   Alphadroid 01 and I stepped up to the microphones, with Zatanna, Kara
and Beta all standing in attendance behind us.  I was dressed casually, not
having any reason to wear any of my protective or wired suits.

   Alpha had prepared a statement for me to read, followed by a statement
for Alphadroid to make, followed by a few questions.

   "Good afternoon..." I started.

   I was interrupted by a bullet fired from a high-end hunting rifle
entering my chest from the front at a downward angle, destroying most of my
heart and part of one lung.  And so I died a rather bloody death...
   TO BE CONTINUED 

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