Divine Artifact in a Scientific World

Natalie noticed Jack was done asking her questions and asked again, "Please tell me where we are and how you were able to make a copy of me. The curiosity is killing me!"

He told her about Genesis Heart, templates, simulations, soul bonds, and even described his remote-presence technique.

When he was done she said, "Damn. Part of me wants you to soul bond me so we can take advantage of your remote-presence technique and gain true insider information. We could rule the market. But I must resist."

He'd already considered the insider-trading aspect. If he could be the invisible fly on the wall during company boardroom meetings, he could use that information to make profitable stock trades.

But if he did that too often, the SEC would notice, and he wouldn't have any explanation for how he was so lucky, so often.

"Resist?"

"Yes. I want to beat the market through my own mind, not through," she waved her hands at him, "magic. It's tempting. Very tempting. But the SEC would come knocking eventually and I would not be able to show the trail of logic that led to each trade. My pride won't let me make use of your advantage."

"But doesn't everyone else cheat every way they can?"

"Yes, we all do. But I want to compete on a level playing field. If I make use of your remote-present technique, then I'm no longer pitting myself against all the other traders. I'd be shooting fish in a barrel. And that's boring."

He'd heard students arguing over this very idea. Some argued that a win was a win, no matter how it was achieved. Others argued that cheating was boring, and a win was only rewarding if it was achieved fairly.

In her case, Natalie relished the challenge of beating the market at its own game. Of using all the same cheats as everyone else, just better.

"Alright. One last question. What are the chances that you will betray me and either skim off some of my money or run with it all?"

She looked offended that he'd even asked that question.

"You've already entrusted me with more than anyone else would. If you actually gave me 500 million credits to manage, I'll be loyal to you for life. Besides, if my father found out I'd cheated or betrayed, he'd kill me himself and deliver my head to your doorstep."

He blinked in surprise at her vehemence. Especially the bit about delivering her head.

"Um, that last bit? That's an exaggeration, right?"

"No, he really would. Or my brother, if my father couldn't manage it. Bykov stands for honor and loyalty. If one of us besmirches our name, the rest of us are obliged to 'clean up'."

Okaaayyy. Just what kind of family does she have?

"Um, just what does your family do that they take honor and loyalty that seriously? I mean, shunning or disowning someone is what most families would do, not... murder."

"My father acts as an intermediary, and my brother is a courier. They are trusted by kings, presidents, CEOs, and underworld bosses."

"Then how'd you end up being a trader?"

"My father encouraged each of us to pursue our own dreams. As long as we do so with honor. The reason my father can work for such a diverse set of high-profile people is that our family has earned a reputation of trustworthiness, regardless of what we do."

"And your family's business won't interfere with your work?"

"No. They would never allow it. And those that make use of my family's services would not trust them if such were possible."

Her revelations about her family, while surprising, ultimately had no bearing on his decisions.

He didn't bother saying "goodbye". He just deleted her instance, then deleted her template.

Back in the physical world, he transferred an additional 450 million credits to Plutus Financial.

As his parallel self was walking through his white room on his way to his lab, Madison called out to him.

"Jack, I got it working!"

"What? The mega-server farm?"

She walked up to him and hugged him. It was a regular occurrence. At least two or three times a day, she would look for him to get a hug.

"Yep. And I made it even better than we initially talked about. I got it up to 12 million servers."

"Twelve? How'd you do that? I thought the solar panels could only support three million."

"If we laid them out flat, yes. But I figured, since the simulation is a sphere, why not make use of the whole thing? So I put the solar panels all around the surface of a sphere that is just smaller than the simulation."

"Okay, that makes sense. The simulation can emit light along the entire surface of its interior, but what about the servers? Where did you put them? And what did you do about the heat?"

"I filled the inside of the sphere with water! Then, put the servers inside rooms in the skin of the sphere. It will take over eight hundred years before the water reaches boiling point. Rina will develop photonic chips long before then."

"Huh. Right. It takes one joule to raise one cubic centimeter of water one degree kelvin. And a nearly ten-kilometer-radius sphere of water has a lot of cubic centimeters."

"Yep, like four times ten to the eighteenth power. So it would take eight years to raise the water temperature by even one degree Kelvin."

"It always amazes me just how much energy it takes to heat water. Good job!"

He rubbed her back encouragingly.

"Were you able to do anything with your new mega-server farm?"

"Yep. I was able to train a basic large language model in a matter of hours. Hours! Even the largest AI providers took months to do the same. I'm working on recreating the other model types, but all the AI companies are using private training data sets."

"Will that be a problem? "Does that private data give them an advantage?

"Maybe. There are open-source models trained on open data sets that are almost as good as the proprietary models. So, I'm going to focus on that for now. Rina and I are also discussing ways to leverage simulations to train AI models."

"What about specialist models? Like a lawyer's assistant, or doctor's assistant?"

"I'll start work on that once I can recreate the open-source models."

He knew that what she had accomplished was big. Hours instead of months. Companies would kill for that kind of advantage.

If they achieved AGI, they would have to make sure they did not give it access to the real Internet until Madison could prove to him that it was safe, that it could not pull a skynet.

But once they had a safe, trustable, human-level AI. There was so much they could accomplish.