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Chapter Four
“Dr. Bell, if you could pause for a moment.”
Gracie was drawing on the whiteboard, connecting embeddings and transformers, trying her best to put on the 2D whiteboard a 3D representation of what she saw so clearly in her mind in a higher dimensional representation. Had she made a mistake? She scanned the squares and circles and diamonds she’d drawn, the arrows in between, solid and dotted and doubled, some doubleheaded. Maybe if she starred the objects that incorporated selfattention…
“Perhaps, Dr. Bell,” Dahlia said from the back of the room, “if we work through on your concepts one by one.” She came to the front and took the three colored markers out of Gracie’s hand. “First, let’s concentrate on your improvements to VADIM.” She drew a loop around some boxes.
Dahlia gave a concise overview of what Gracie had done with the database. Dahlia understood Gracie’s concepts. The software team, three men and one woman, asked Dahlia questions, which was an improvement over the confused looks they’d given Gracie. Dahlia was able to answer most of the questions herself, which let Gracie be the consulting expert for the deeper ones. The process seemed to work.
Dahlia also understood what Gracie’s videos were capable of. When they’d first entered the conference room with Kellen and his team Dahlia had whispered, “Your video worked superbly.” The embrace Dahlia and Kellen shared said as much, especially in the way their eyes met.
That brief but intense interaction had left Gracie feeling a bit confused. The images from Dahlia’s videos had been swirling in her mind anyway. That shared look made those images come alive, which sent shivers all over her.
The shivers and confusion returned when Dahlia’s and her hands had touched during the marker transfer. Gracie was feeling the same hand that had so recently been caressing Kellen’s… penis.
“Dr. Bell, perhaps you could better answer Vivek’s question.” Dahlia’s look as she said that was a gentle reminder to stay focused. “Vivek, could you give a bit more detail?”
“I’m… I guess wondering why…” Vivek tried, “you seem to use three or four different computer languages. Why make it all so complicated?”
“Complicated?” Gracie didn’t think of things that way. “It’s simpler. Really. The recursion…” Gracie suddenly halted her speech. A stunning image had flashed through her mind, a ual image. She shook it off and continued: “… each jjjob, I mean task, is simple in the right language. Linux script for connections, C for CUDA mods, Python” she pointed at different polygons “and Haskell and Lisp where recursion is the best method.” She shrugged. She tried to maintain attention to the meeting, but the concept of recursion brought back the image she’d just had and the image hung in her vision. On her knees in a mirrored room in front of a man. Another thought Dahlia had put in her mind was the idea of selfrecursion, that Gracie could do a video on herself, modify herself. And then naturally her modded self would want to create a new video to further modify herself. And then… She pushed it away again. It was worse than an infinite loop. The recursion would continue all the way down… to what?
Vivek shook his head, not in denial. She’d been immediately interested in him. He had strong masculine features and she liked how his name had two V’s she couldn’t remember any of the other programmers’ names but now she decided she didn’t want him. At least not enough to show him a video. She wondered why that would be his sharp blue eyes contrasted so strikingly with his mahogany skin but she was distracted as Dahlia moved on to Gracie’s core breakthrough, her machine learning model of ANTONIO, Anomalous Nonspecific Transfer of Neural Image Operands.
She had to take over then, because even Dahlia didn’t get all the twists and turns of what she’d created to get around needing that awful chair they called MARCO, instead using the subject’s own reactions and his facial changes, particularly his eyes and head movements, to train an ML transformer that would control the ANTONIO. And the man she aimed it at. Or her facial changes, Gracie thought as she mapped the way through the diagram; it worked on female minds also. Dahlia had proven that.
She got through it by pretending she was in arenamode and each small step in the process was a new location on the map and each question another opponent to frag. It was almost enjoyable, scanning the group, anticipating their reactions, aiming her answers. But, like arenamode, exhausting.
She got away from the meeting with only a few action items, mostly to comment her work and add refs in the comments to certain techniques she’d used that somehow these software engineers weren’t acquainted with. Fine. And a private todo for herself: sanitizing her code to remove the specific features.
But before she could quietly disappear, Dahlia took her arm. “Let’s talk.”
# # #
Back to the cafe they went. “So I think that meeting went well,” Dahlia began. “The software team understands enough to get started. Kellen will handle the neurologists. Don’t worry.”
“Worry?” Gracie wasn’t a worrier.
“It’s going to take time to get the biotech people to accept your advance. Didn’t you wonder why none of them were in the meeting?”
Gracie hadn’t. She shrugged.
“Ah, Grace dear, you’re so special, so pure.” Dahlia paused to take a breath. “You need to understand how much effort, not to mention expense, went into building MARCO, that chair you hate. Scientists are human too, and some of them are… let’s say… emotionally invested in MARCO and therefore very reluctant to admit that what they spent a significant part of their careers developing could be made obsolete by to use their words ‘a few lines of code’.”
“It’s thousands of lines, and” but Dahlia’s raised hand stopped Gracie from also pointing out that every line of highlevel code was really thousands, sometimes millions, of computer instructions.
“I know, dear. I of course understand.” Dahlia reached across the table to take Gracie’s hands in hers. “We’re on your side. Kellen and I, of all people, know that your technology works very, very well!” Dahlia’s smile, with her whole face, her eyes and cheeks as well as her mouth, was nearly as beatific as the one she’d shown Kellen before the meeting.
“So,” Gracie replied, feeling stupid as soon as she’d said the words, “you tried it? It worked for you?”
“Several times, dear.” Dahlia chuckled as Gracie’s hands jerked a tiny bit. “I was magnificent. Wore him out. Thank you so much. I mean, between us girls” Dahlia moved close and put a hand on Gracie’s shoulder. Her voice became quieter but more intense. “I knew I liked it, fellatio, sucking cock, but I never realized how much, and how natural it was to just do it without holding back and give myself to my lover totally. It’s… it’s exhilarating!”
Dahlia pulled away, a little shiver running over her, which she shook off, returning to a professional demeanor. She went on to describe how Kellen planned to set up a series of experiments, carefully executed, to verify Gracie’s method, letting the neurologists be as skeptical as they wanted, but insisting on scientific rigor. “It’s going to be tough, Grace, but he knows, Kellen knows, because of that video you created, that it all works. You did it, Grace, you did it.”
Gracie didn’t know quite what she’d done. She did, of course, intellectually. Kellen had ended the meeting with a little pep talk to his software team after the presentation, explaining how this new procedure he actually called it the “Bell procedure” would help thousands, maybe millions of troubled people. That was great. She was glad she could help. But…
“But we don’t need that chair anymore. Or the database, VADIM.”
“It got you started.”
“Yes, but…”
“And we can use MARCO to verify new concepts you may come up with.”
“Um…”
“Look at it this way. You know about the recent machine learning weather forecasts that are massively outperforming traditional weather forecasting simulations, right?”
“Sure.”
“Your procedure is like that. Except…” Dahlia paused in thought. “Except the Bell procedure is more like you take satellite photos of a hurricane and then predict its path in real time. Hmm…” She paused again. “And then you strategically drop bombs on the hurricane to redirect it where you want it to go. Good analogy. I need to tell Kellen.”
“I’m controlling the weather? Mental weather?”
“Only if there’s already a hurricane. In your case a ual vortex. Then you can grow it and direct it” she laughed “right up between your legs and into your tropical paradise. Ha! Kellen’s going to love this.” Dahlia turned to her computer and began typing rapidly.
Gracie should have felt pleased with Dahlia’s enthusiastic praise. But down deep, inside herself, underneath the mental world she worked so hard to keep neat and orderly, she felt unsettled. Something had changed. She didn’t know quite what, but she knew she’d done something to herself, actually had just begun to do something to herself, created a vortex inside herself, and had started a recursive process on her own… psyche? spirit? She hated those squishy, mystical terms… but she knew recursion and she knew it could go on and on, deeper and deeper. But recursive code was notoriously hard to debug. If something went wrong, if there was a glitch in her psyche, how could she debug herself? Which one of her mods was the debugger? Did the concept of a bug even have any meaning?
Dahlia was now working her phone, making Gracie’s phone ping with a schedule of meetings as Kellen and his team planned to implement the Bell procedure in VICTOR. Gracie just nodded and accepted the invitations. Dahlia had done it. Dahlia had modded herself. Dahlia had advanced ahead of Gracie into that unknown territory and was fine. More than fine.
Gracie realized then why she didn’t want Vivek. Or, anymore, most of the men she’d videoed. Once Dahlia had shown it was possible, Gracie didn’t want a man she couldn’t recurse herself with. That’s how she thought of it. She wanted a man she could picture doing for, or with, or to she didn’t know how to express her desire verbally do what Dahlia clearly loved to do to Kellen.
She wanted a man like Paul or Brady. She’d done Paul, partially. She pictured Brady at the moment, their second time together, when she was kneeling naked before him. He held her head back and he was spurting his white… she had to stop herself. She was getting wet just thinking about… about… “Sorry, I need to… just… um… do something. Text me,” she blurted and stood.
Dahlia stood also. “This is all a bit much, isn’t it? Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” It was as if again Dahlia could read her mind. “Go on. Do what you need to do. It will all work out.” She hugged Gracie, then took her by the arm and led her out of the cafe, into the U. plaza. She even kissed Gracie goodbye, on the forehead, like a big sister. Nobody kissed Gracie. But Dahlia did. And Paul, when…
Gracie walked home. The trip took longer than usual because, although she’d taken the route hundreds of times, she kept missing turns. She didn’t care. She wanted Brady, she’d figure out how they would get together physically later, but now she was already working on getting their minds together, not even needing her trusty tablet, crafting in her mind a new version for Brady. For herself.
# # #
Everything seemed new. It was frustrating, nearly overwhelming.
Gracie walked off the plane and into the waiting area wanting to just put her head down and go, move forward, the way she did on campus, really everywhere. But she hadn’t been to this airport before, so she just hefted her bag and followed the crowd and the signs that pointed to the exit. She had a ton of work to do, not just the multiple Slacks, messages, and emails from the VICTOR team that she needed to carefully answer. Now there were also U. Legal, the Physics Department, and other, new departments that had heard about her. She’d thought she would take care of all that during the flight, but instead she’d just stared at her tablet, then out the window. All she could think about was Brady.
And there, at the bottom of the escalator, was Brady. It was such a relief to see him, just where he’d said he would be. He asked her how her flight was, he took her bag, he hugged her, he led her out to the garage and his car. It was all fine. But she felt in a daze, as if she’d already done the video on herself, 2.2GF, although it was still on her phone, in her backpack, waiting for her to touch the button.
Was this what one of her recursive functions felt like, after she’d called it and it was compelled to call itself, and then there it was, called by itself and calling itself again? She wasn’t the kind of person to anthropomorphize things, not at all. Code was code. But her life seemed to be snowballing. She knew she’d done something to herself, was continuing to do it, and needed to do more. Her professional and personal lives, which she’d always tried to keep separate, were swirling together. Her innovations to VADIM had been installed and the new models were much improved, they told her. The database wasn’t necessary anymore but it did improve the performance of the new version, 2.2, and she was sure the new video would be even more potent. She could have done Paul, he would have been more than willing, but he was working overtime enlarging the Computer Center cluster even more, and running the inversion models for her. And anyway, she wasn’t ready for him. She knew what she wanted she thought she knew and knew she’d have to take charge with Paul. She didn’t want to have to think, not for this. She wanted Brady. Brady would know what to do. What to do with her.
We need to talk, she’d texted him after her discussion with Dahlia.
Is there a problem? he immediately replied. You were awesome. I have no regrets.
Maybe Brady was too smart. He seemed to already know what the talk would be about. Not a problem, she thumbed on her phone. I think maybe I need to try fail.
? was the response.
She saw her phone had autocorrected what her trembling fingers had halftyped and accidentally sent. Nerd girl that she was, she’d almost sent him the technical term for what went on in those Dahlia images; but as just a girl, a woman, she shivered at the leap into the unknown that word was going to mean.
Sorry need to, she retyped, and then, the autocorrection giving her the idea, she continued, fly up and visit you. That was much better. Although expensive. But she lived simply and had plenty of room on her credit cards.
Sure, that would be wonderful. Any time, he immediately replied.
And now here she was, being driven through a new city, her bag locked in the trunk which was somehow a significant commitment on her way to a new place where she would live for a weekend, sleeping in a new bed. Brady was a constant, the only one. She did feel like she’d called her own function. Which was now calling her. To act. She looked at Brady as he drove. She could see herself doing it to him. For him. Could she? Yes, she could.
# # #
Brady was great. When they got to his place he insisted on carrying her bag in. His apartment was small, maybe smaller than hers, but she was relieved to see it wasn’t grad student housing. The bag went casually on the floor near a doorway she thought would lead to his bedroom, an ambiguous signal. Neither of them had brought up specifics. What did he expect from her? What did she expect from herself?
“Would you like some wine? I’ve got dinner almost ready.”
She sat at his table and drank his wine while she watched him make dinner. It was great. She didn’t have to do anything. He was great. She liked watching him move. He was a head taller than her and on the slim side. Her eyes kept drifting to his bulge. Her phone lay on the table. She remembered the image that had appeared in her mind during her presentation to the Neuro team: she was on her knees in front of Brady, in a mirrored room about the size of that elevator where she’d exposed herself to him. The mirrors let her see herself in an infinite series of reflections, left and right, under her and, when she looked up at Brady, above her. There were no mirrors in Brady’s kitchen, but she got a sudden urge to get it over with and do herself right now with 2.2GF, get on her knees and do him.
He brought over two plates of salad. “Pasta’s almost ready. My mother’s Italian. Taught me a few things. Like the wine? Do you think it’s good?”
She almost giggled. He was nervous. A guy was nervous around her, not because he was intimidated by her brain. Because… he found her attractive? y? Did he sense what she had planned for him? For them? Could he be that smart?
The meal was simple, spaghetti in meat sauce, but very good. She drank a lot of wine. She was nervous too. “Okay,” he said as they finished their meal, “all you said was you wanted to talk. You flew all the way up here. What did you want to talk about? Did you get an offer? Ivy League? I could totally see that, no problem. Or…?”
It was so difficult to put the multidimensional constructs she naturally thought in into the onedimensional form of language. Where to begin? “I” she started, then, no longer able to contain herself, blurted it out: “I have a new version.”
“Of course. I’d be surprised if you didn’t. And you only want to use it on me?”
“It’s… special. Not… like the others.”
He sighed. He picked up the bottle and refilled her glass. She hadn’t realized she’d emptied it. Gracie had never tried and never wanted to try psychedelics or other drugs. She like her brain just the way it was. But alcohol was different. A little bit, half a drink, seemed to loosen her body and actually help her think. But now… and their previous time, their date… something about Brady let her feel safe, safe to let herself go, brain and body together. She wanted to expose herself again to him, like in the elevator when she’d raised her dress. Now, though, it was a different part of her she wanted to offer him, that he could already see. She stared at him after she took a long sip, hoping he could tell, visualizing…
“Gracie? I love how you’re smiling. Makes me wonder what you’re thinking and it has to be great. But now tell me. These” he waved at her phone.
“Videos.”
“Ha! Videos? They’re definitely way more than just videos. What are they, really? Do I need an NDA?”
“I don’t care about that. I don’t know. They’re… I’m working on this project, with Neurology.”
“Neurology? That’s a surprise. Why would they need you?”
“It’s their data. Gigantic. Terabytes. A mess. They were desperate and… and…” She told him about VICTOR. It was like a dam breaking inside her. Brady listened. It took a while, even for her, to explain it all. Not all, no way could she get it all into words. But enough. Brady was smart.
“This is amazing. You take any image and, sort of, insert it into someone’s brain, and they’ll do it? You can make people do things?”
“Yes. But… only if it’s something that they’re not… I mean, not if it’s something they’d never do.”
“I see. So it’s like hypnosis?”
“It’s” She almost mentioned Dahlia. She’d spent some time talking with her about the video, its effects, including its effects on Dahlia, which would be the effects on her. She didn’t want to get into that right now. “It’s stronger than hypnosis.” Dahlia had described it as like being utterly enthralled by your therapist, who knew you inside out, your deepest secrets, and was a charismatic orator.
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