0 comments/ 3754 views/ 0 favorites Sharon3003 Ch. 01 By: Taunus Disclaimer: This story is fiction cast in the future. No resemblance to persons living or dead is intended or should be inferred. * It is the year 3003 and Harold Watless has finally managed to save up enough money to put a sizable down payment on a gynoid. For those unfamiliar with the term "gynoid," it is a female android. (AKA a Fembot.) Originally created for the home and hospice care of the geriatric cases, gynoids and their male counterparts, androids, can be purchased for companionship and attention to mundane, routine, banal household chores. Moreover, for enough money one can have a creature that is more alluring and seductive than human flesh itself. Harold's dream angel is the likeness of Sharon Stone as a barely legal, eighteen-year-old. Unfortunately, that model is too expensive. He has to settle for her at the age of fifty-one. Just how does the fifty-one-year-old likeness of Sharon Stone measure up? The gynoid is 5'7", 125 lbs, 35(B)-25-35, blonde with blue eyes, and a wealth of knowledge. Ownership of a gynoid is more than a simple property purchase. A gynoid is a cook, chauffeur, personal assistant, dental and hygienic care specialists, tax and budget manager. Why is it more? The government requires the purchaser of such a gynoid to engage in a particular academic pursuit as well. The submissive sex slave is also a teacher! Sex in the gynoid world comes at a price. The barely-legal, eighteen-year-old is not programmed to teach. Pure pleasure comes with a steep price tag, or so it seems. It is a windy, Wednesday morning when a delivery truck unloads a sarcophagus to Harold's home. The shipping box is also Harold's coffin. Once inside the house, Harold opens the box and strips away the packing material to reveal a gorgeous lady dressed in basic black. His hands tremble with nervous anticipation. The gynoid comes to life. "Harold," she speaks, "I require an Initial Program Load (IPL). As anxious as you are, I must run system diagnostics and charge the batteries. Don't worry, the welcome orientation will come soon enough. The company guarantees that you will not be disappointed." Harold sits and struggles to restrain his crass, carnal cravings. "Sharon," he utters, "I have scrimped and saved for months for you." "Your financial statements are on line," Sharon replies. "Now be patient. Tomorrow morning I will prepare you breakfast and be totally on line. Now be a good boy and study the owner's manual." In the Twenty-Third Century most fossil fuels were depleted. The so-called renewable energy sources proved disappointing. There were two primary energy producers: fission and fusion. Fission was known as nuclear power. Despite the dangers of meltdowns and radiation, "burning" Uranium worked. Fusion, on the other had, was much more difficult and less efficient. Fusion, the nuclear transforming of Helium from Deuterium, was just barely able to extract more energy than the the energy needed input to sustain the plasma field. The plasma field converted hydrocarbons, usually waste, into natural gas, water, and Carbon Monoxide. Carbon Monoxide is also a fuel, albeit a dangerous one for living organisms. The natural gas and water were consumer items. In the Twenty-Fifth Century, a more efficient plasma field generation was obtained. This technique was neither fusion nor fission. It relied on the total conversion of the proton to energy (plus a positron). This was known as "induced proton decay." The mind behind this phenomenon was none other than a Twentieth Century Hollywood model with an IQ of 154. How she came into the knowledge and was able to suggest the route to a penultimate, quintessential solution to the energy conundrum was undetermined. However, the result was anything but trivial. Harold tosses and turns all night long. When he does drift into an hypnagogic state, he is rudely cast into a paradox. His libido, long dormant under the daily burden of work and the attention to minor details, is resurrected. This reincarnation consists of a mighty but short-lived priapism! Then, as his member returns to its flaccid state, sleep leaves his eyes with vivid images. For once he irrationally feels subject to an uncontrolled erection. (But it is much less than the "four hour" rule.) At last the six o'clock alarm rings and he gets prepared for a day at work. A voice calls him. "Harry," Sharon summons him by his long-forgotten nickname, "Scrambled egg whites, turkey sausage, and whole wheat toast. You don't have to eat cold raisin bran this morning! Up and at them Sergeant Rock! There is brewed black coffee." Thirty years ago Harold was a sergeant in the US Army Infantry. He referred to it as being "in the service of his majesty the queen." The infantry is known as the queen of battle, from the chessboard. The Code of Conduct echoes through his mind: "I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard our country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense. I will never surrender of my own free will." Seated at the table, Sharon brings his food. She is wearing only an apron and is barefoot. He is transfixed by her beauty. "Eat, silly man," she whispers. "I will be here when you get home from work." Somehow Harold manages to eat his breakfast, dress, and head out for another routine, predictable day on the job. He works in the testing laboratory for processed meat at the Khannibal Meat Exports, Inc. He has been working this job for twenty years. After his military time, Harold used his GI Bill of Rights to get a four-year college degree in bio-chemistry. This landed him a job at a large meat exporting firm. American beef, pork, and chicken are processed and shipped to Asia. The company is owned by a Chinese firm. The day is finally over. Harold hurries to the underground Metro station to get an early transport home. Travel is managed by shuttle-like vehicles, which collect a number of nearby residents, optimize a travel route, and speed on magnetic plates to the desired destinations. Harold holds up his FasTaksee(tm) card and the local view screen directs him to FasTaksee Number 41. He is number ten, two more quickly board, maximizing the load. Sometimes there isn't a full load of fares, in such case the timer maxes out and the passengers are transported. But it is rush hour and the grid is busy. FasTaksee is more expensive than PeeplesKab. His choice of transport makes a handshake with the delivery address upon arrival and scans the delivery point for suspicious activity. Imagine Harold's surprise when Sharon greets him at the front door. She is wearing a brown army T-shirt, camouflage pants,, and black combat boots. "Look what I've prepared for you tonight?" Sharon says. It is a meal served on one of the Titanium alloy field trays. At the six o'clock position on the tray there are three slices of 15% fat roast beef. At ten o'clock there is a dollop of mashed potatoes with an island of brown gravy in the center. At twelve o'clock is a flour biscuit. At two o'clock is a serving of green snap beans, some with the short stem still attached. In the absolute center of the tray is an apricot half in heavy syrup. It is deja vu for Harold. As Harold eats, Sharon pours him a cup of freshly viewed coffee. The thick viscous liquid brings back memories of military operations in distant places. Now he will accept no further delays. It is time to enjoy the submissive sex slave performance. He takes Sharon's hand and leads her to the bed. He is unaware of her emission of odorless pheromones. His parasympathetic nervous system is in max overdrive. He feels like an eighteen-year-old with raging hormones. His experience with the skillfully crafted gynoid is earth-shattering and euphoric. From her various orifices exude powerful magnetic flux. These are generated from powerful magnetic circuits internal to her body. These directed lines of magnetic flux are true manifestations and reifications of ectoplasm. As her tongue enters his mouth the magnetic flux lines activate endorphins and atavistic animal attractors. He feels the earth move and the sky redden. Her vagina pulses and undulates as an ocean awaiting the fury of a hurricane. Pristine, white beaches sparkle as a million diamonds under a searing sun. As his climax approaches, he senses her pubococcygeal muscles flex. Her nipples harden and stand erect as sentries on guard duty. Harold sits on a sofa as Sharon cleans and sanitizes the supper dishes. She then fetches him an organic coffee with real cream and raw brown sugar. This is an expensive dessert. Today is a special day. A song flows from the lips of the gynoid. It is "Lovers' Concerto" sung by Kelly Chen. The music is "Minuet in G-Major" by Johann Sebastian Bach. The music is mood synched as well as lyrics frequently viewed by Harold. "Your studies begin tomorrow," Sharon explains. "You remember that gynoids are purchased on contract with governmental oversight. Tomorrow we will study plasma technology. Read up on it in transit two and from work and during your lunch break. I am uploading your first lesson." Harold sighs. He frowns. "What a waste of time," he thinks. "This course of study is nothing but busy work to make some worthless twit of a school teacher happy. No doubt that the cackling pedant never had sex with a real human male." A saving grace is that the lessons are not very hard and that there are pirated answer keys available. Harold knows a co-worker, Mark, who is always quick to sell a pirated movie, avatar, or test questions. Harold makes to mental note---certainly not a note in his electronic calendar---to drop by Mark's desk on some pretext of work. Mark works with bovine growth statistics. Harold notices several things about his gynoid. Sometimes her blue eyes seem green, forest green even. Sometimes they appear hazel, his eye color. Harold hates his hazel eyes, being a sorry fusion of green and brown. Sometimes Sharon seems taller than her 5'7". He needs to read the owners' manual. Gynoids generally go shopping in groups. There are neo-Luddites, technophobes, and destructive gangs who attack gynoids, androids, and cyborgs. Some right-wing religious organizations also preach against these "non-human" sentient beings. 18 January 2013 Sharon3003 Ch. 02 Disclaimer: This story is fiction cast in the future. No resemblance to persons living or dead is intended or should be inferred. * Harold Watless stops by the desk of his shady friend Mark Rains. Both work for the Khannibal Meat Exports, Inc. Harold works in the testing laboratory while Mark works tsting and measuring the level of bovine growth hormones in beef and dairy products. Mark was a successful underground hacker and software pirate before becoming "legit." He still harbors a network of aficionados. "Hi Mark," Harold greets his friend, "I have a few test results that I'd like to go over with you." "Ah," Mark replies, knowing full well that there is a hidden agenda. One must be careful of surveillance. "How's the new gynoid. The whole office is abuzz about her. One of those intellectual models with brains as well as beauty. Mark angles his torso and speaks with a heavy accent to confound and confuse the voice-to-text transcribers and lip-reading cameras. Mark was raised in New Russia and is hip to the western surveillance apparatuses. The accent is a perfect work-around for voice and lip-sync software. "Yeah," Harold responds. "But I had to go for the 'education' and fifty-one year-old avatar. The idea of having to study Taylorism and Fordism in addition to quasi-scientific management clap trap disgusts me a maximum. As if my no-brain, brain-dead, dead-end, end-game job isn't miserable enough!" "I know precisely what you have in mind," Mark agrees. Mark makes a note on a yellow Post-In Tab(tm) and hands it under the desk to Harold. It is a Universal Resource Locator (URL) for a site housing gynoid "education" test questions and answers. "Do not cut and paste. Some perturbation is necessary. A few misspelled words here and there, a bit of bad grammar, and fractured parallelism are advised," Mark suggests. Harold nods agreement and slips a medium-sized banknote back to Mark. Harold doesn't want to overpay. On the other hand, greasing the skids is always a champion idea. The idea that cheating as a moral issue is lost in the bureaucratic indifference and arrogance associated with the managerial propaganda masquerading as education. On the way home in a FasTaksee, Harold scans the test material. He opens and closes the required reading material, just to show that he has visited the site. Then he reviews the quiz questions and answers from Mark's URL. The first generic question asks for the reader to describe what a "plasma" is. Harold looks over the "best answer." The site suggests that plasma is a state of matter. There are supposedly four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. In this state, plasma is electronically conductive, having electromagnetic properties not found in the other states of matter. The site babbles on and Harold makes a mental note as how best to answer the first question. The second question asks the reader to explain how natural gas is generated from the fusion power of a plasma field. Harold reads through the minutiae and technobabble and technodrivel. He surmises that layering in the plasma field and magnetic segregation of ion families can be used to transform hydrocarbons and waste garbage into natural gas, Carbon Monoxide, and Water. Still the hoped-for efficiently is severely lacking. While slightly better than the 29% efficiency of the solar electricity generation, the fusion process is marginal at best. Its strong point is that energy must constantly be pumped into it to sustain the plasma field. There is no danger of a meltdown, as is in the case of fission power generation. The final question concerns the successor to the fusion plasma energy converter. Here the penultimate, quintessential power comes not from the mass defect of fusing two Deuterium nuclei together but rather from the direct conversion of the proton into its components of energy and a positron. In the scheme of things, first is fission (mass excess), second is fusion (mass defect), and the third is proton decay (mass to energy conversion). The questions and answers are boring Harold to tears. He is glad to see his house and exit the FasTaksee. Sharon is waiting for Harold. She is wearing the red silks of a Gorean slave girl. There is barbeque, fresh-baked bread, and cold beer for supper. The aroma envelops his mind. Sharon brings sandals to replace his work shoes. The faint odors of sandalwood and Frankincense pervade the air. The theme is lit with candles and energy bulbs. This is certainly the image of a man's world. "Barbeque, bread, beer. And, well," Harold tells no particular person. The sentient artificial intelligence (AI) of his gynoid registers, records, and stores away his utterance. She knows that it is best to let him feast and fill his belly before confronting him with the day's educational agenda. It's "pay before play" for the corporation making the gynoids. As he finishes his meal and Sharon puts away the dishes, Harold feels his libido swell. Then comes the let down. "A little quiz, Master," Sharon requests, pushing him and his amorous advances away. "Damnation," Harold bellows. The gynoid face has no expression of sympathy, joy, or resolve. That "poker face" enrages Harold. He restrains himself from bitch slapping his sentient slave. But the emotional level is skillfully analyzed. After a moment Harold calms down and suffers answering the three questions. He knows only two well that more and more difficult questions, quizzes, and tests will follow. After his mind-numbing orgasm, where thunder precedes lightning and "cause and effect" are reversed, Harold begins considering some way to extricate himself from the busy work from effete intellectual snobs. He is almost certain that he has overhead Mark mentioning some way to short circuit the programming and eliminate the silly software subroutine that is now a supreme irritation. "She is never supposed to say 'no!'" Harold imagines. Well, there is the fine print. The next day after work, Harold has a "random encounter" with Mark on the way to the Metro FasTaksee stand. "Hey, Mark," Harold hails. "'Sup Dude?" Mark replies. "How can I remove that stupid education clap trap from my gynoid?" Harold inquires. "There are problems. This means hacking into a database and planting some malware," Mark answers. "But there is nothing like a hoary old curmudgeon and a lecherous old goat wanting young, hot pussy!" "Well, fifty-one isn't exactly barely-legal," Harold retorts. "Look Harold," Mark responds apologetically. "I was once a hacker and know the risks involved. And the Department of Education is run by a bunch of worthless, asexual morons. They think that making people do busy work and learn meaningless drivel will somehow elevate the society. How many great scientists have given up their useful endeavors in order to please some spoiled, tenured infant and gain a sinecure?" "I couldn't agree more," Harold interjects, truncating Mark's vitriolic diatribe. Mark was one of the most intelligent men that Harold had ever encountered. He left his illegal, albeit highly profitable, career in crime in order to keep his girl Ln2. His girl is a cyborg. They share common dreams via high speed cable connections between enhanced Magneto Resonance Imaging (eMRI). Their mental states are synced. IN order to secure permission for such an operation, Mark had to step out of the shadows. He hacked into Khannibal's financial database. When he showed the management the danger, he was hired immediately and placed in a make-work job. Mark concludes: "Benjamin Franklin was correct when he said that most education is of little practical value. Those who claim that chess somehow sharpens one's ability to predict, plan, prepare are full of it. For anyone else I would refuse. But, Harold, knowing how you want the dream woman who can't say 'no,' I'm making this one time concession. Now I have to get my ride." "Thank you very much," Harold replies. He gets in a TasTaksee and heads back. Once again, en route, he has to look over some Feynman Diagrams. 21 January 2013 Sharon3003 Ch. 03 Disclaimer: This story is fiction cast in the future. No resemblance to persons living or dead is intended or should be inferred. In the Twenty-Fifth Century fossil fuels are mostly exhausted. The next logical energy source is nuclear, that is fission or the splitting of the atom. From Uranium energy is obtained; however, radioactive melt-down is always a feared consequence. Science and technology turned to fusion, the creation of Helium from Deuterium. This proves to be an erstwhile energy source. But it relies on maintaining a plasma field. The plasma field is an energy hog. A more efficient plasma field generation is obtained. This technique is neither fusion nor fission. It relies on the total conversion of the proton to energy (plus a positron). This is known as "induced proton decay." The mind behind this phenomenon is none other than a Twentieth Century Hollywood model. One of the engineers developing the plasma converter is Harrell Haas. It was he who, studying old postings to ancient newsgroups, discovered the remarkable underlying paradigm. No sober scientist can disagree that proton decay is the penultimate, quintessential solution to the energy conundrum. In the year 3003 Harrell Haas is remembered for two things: first, he ensured that a Twentieth Century Hollywood celebrity received her just credit for the proton decay paradigm; and, second, that a religious "drive" subroutine was introduced into the android sentient intelligence. When it first appeared plausible to "unwrap" a proton to yield energy and its kernel positron, hoards of plagiarizing pedants and tenured teachers gushed forward, as vomit from the mouth of a drunk, to claim credit and authorship. Harrell secured documents, both image and hard copy, to prove the authorship by the blonde, blue-eyed, bodacious babe. In the Twentieth Century and for decades thereafter, physicists tried to figure out elementary particles by slamming high-speed electrons and protons into targets. The results were ambiguous and inconclusive, creating more problems than solutions. Freeing up the energy from proton decay is analogous to opening a Series 200 combination lock. One can bust it open with a sledge hammer or dial in the combination. For example: Left 64, Right 48, Left 8, then Right zero to open. Which is the preferred method? In the Third Millennium, the world population expands more than exponentially; it expands factorially! The primary cause is simple. People are living to long and require high maintenance for their final years. (Did I say "high maintenance"? I should have said "ultra-high maintenance.") In the scriptures it is written that three-score and ten are a man's years. That is seventy. It goes on to say that even if a man lives to four score years (eighty) that there is no profit to him. This may be biblical and please His Holiness the Pope of Rome, but for governments and society the problem is overwhelming. The solution is obvious. Elderly patient care must be delegated to robotic caregivers. At the turn of the millennium, few if any believe that sentient beings can be built to manage patient care. Again, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century no one believes that agriculture can be mechanized. At the dawn of the Nineteenth Century, no one would believe in steam power, the cotton gin, or many other devices. The simple truth is that necessity is the mother of invention. A global necessity gives rise to a global solution. Androids and gynoids are required for patient care giving. But there is a substantial side effect. What robust human male would not desire a curvacious, submissive, perfectly proportioned gynoid to tend to his every want and need? What spoiled female would not desire the perfect suitor? There you have it. Program a sentient being with the ability to administer medicine, do bookkeeping, prepare food, clean, disinfect, wash clothes, mend clothing, make minor plumbing repairs, clean teeth, do minor dental surgery, remove moles, warts, and so on. This functionality is all programmable in addition to playing chess, checkers, tic-tac-toe. It would only be a matter of time until a hacker produces an adroit anthropomorphic "skin job." What is being postulated is the perfect gynoid, Pygmalion's Galatea no less. "Tell me it's not true?" the old timer murmurs. "Is there a machine that can play chess smaller than the empire state building, requiring less power than Niagara Falls to power it, and requiring the water of Niagara Falls to cool it?" Enough said. It was pornography that figured out how to conduct business transactions via the Internet. For sure it will be artificial intelligence that fashions the robotics in home care for the disabled, geriatric, and senile. This is not dismissing those with "special needs." This all cost money. But a human care giver is expensive, doubly so with a quantum leap in those requiring aid and a dwindling able-bodied work force in construction, transportation, manufacturing, and the service sector. Strange that restaurants, hotels, and beauty salons are human labor-intensive and not easily outsourced. The android, gynoid, or fembot will possess free time. Sentient and observant, it was a logical move for Harrell Haas to strike back at the educational establishment, managed as "for profit" and top heavy with cackling pedants, yes-men, nepotism, and cronyism. His retort is the insertion of a subroutine to suggest religion to the sentient beings. Organized religion leaps to its feet to welcome soulless beings with money and time to donate. The ministerial appreciation is summed up simply as technophiles call for the emancipation and manumission of sentient lifeforms. To be sure, some humans will will freedom for their loyal care givers. Does history ever repeat itself. What of one who has enjoyed his or her seventies with a social safety net only to awake eighty years old and homeless, indigent, and unwanted. An old timer might say: "If you're broke and it costs a nickel to shit, then you are going to have to vomit." or "Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread that you have, the less shit you eat." Life in 3003 can be grand for those with golden or platinum parachutes. An anatomically correct, fully physically functional, sentient slave can keep a human satisfied. The opposition, composed of the lower classes, neo-Luddites, technophobes, and girls who hate their fathers, can do little more than attack and try to trash an android on a public thoroughfare. The gynoid salesman pitches his product to a recently promoted yuppie. "We have a full range of gorgeous blondes, brunettes, and red heads. Remember, they can 'write, fight, fart, fuck, shoot the shit, and drive a truck.' No need for an expensive home security system or to have to fork over to have your income tax done. If it's not open heart surgery, our gynoids can operate. And dental work as well. Plumbing, electrical, gas problems? Consider them solved. But the best part is in bed. No selfish wench with a headache need annoy you. And loyalty is a gynoid attribute." "Sounds mighty good to me," Mr. Bot Buyer responds. "What about the power supply, Mr. Salesman?" The evolution of the sentient home care provider to a suitable biped took time. Even more perplexing was the need for a portable power supply. The first models had umbilical chords to electrical outlets. More portable back packs and briefcases were eventually developed. The quantum leap came with the internal power supply, making the gynoid a near perfect human image. Still, it would take time to span the "Uncanny Valley." It should not come as a surprise or as a mystery to anyone how a 3D android navigates. (We will use "android" to mean android, gynoid, or fembot.) The technique is identical with the 3D motion sequence and the Biovision Hierarchy (BVH) files. Feedback loops establish the environment: solid, liquid, gas. The center of gravity is carefully calculated and updated as clothing, lifting, etc. are undertaken. Trial and Error (T&E) build up a database. The local database allows the android to navigate. Environmental changes call for re-mapping. The doors are computed along with their "footprint" or area subtended. Finally, over the next millennium, some names are remembered and some will be forgotten. Those forgotten include Mother Teresa, Princess Di, and Jacki O. (Who is "Jackie O.") The foremost of those remembered is the Hollywood actress with the IQ of 154 who saved the planet from "heat death" and "energy starvation." The idea was simple indeed. Apply the very geometry of the proton to induce proton decay. This generates more energy than one would know what to do with! The plasma field resulting processes garbage and waste into recyclable ash, water, and natural gas. This is the penultimate and quintessential renewable energy source. Crops in the fields are need to feed the over-vaulting world population. From fossil fuels to Uranium to fusion---are each just a precursor to the fusion solution: "Burning the heavy water easily extracted from the oceans." Efficiency, however, is the problem that only proton decay can overcome. The acquisition of a sentient servant, be it an android, gynoid, or fembot, is much more than a personal assistant and a masturbatory object. It also speaks to the persona of the purchaser. Harrell Haas has a limited choice of female forms to consider: Stephanie Powers at 18 years old; Neve Campbell at 25 years old; or Sharon Stone at 35 years old. Age morphing software has yet to be perfected in Harrell's time. Also the female pheromones and artificial perspiration of sexual arousal is not yet incorporated into the android. But it's only a matter of time until lust and lechery find their way into the sentient slave marketplace. Do adequately and accurately perform an aging algorithm, a plethora of photos is needed. Only a much photographed actress or model will suffice. 1 February 2013 Sharon3003 Ch. 04 Disclaimer: This story is fiction cast in the future. No resemblance to persons living or dead is intended or should be inferred. * It is the year 3003. Harold Watless and his gynoid, Sharon, are stopping at Starbucks (*$) for coffee. Harold recognizes an old friend sitting alone and reading the news. "James!" Harold exclaims. "May we join you?" The person he is speaking to is James Workman, another retiree. "For sure," James responds. "Who is the beauty. She's too pretty to be human. Is she a skin job?" "Yes, as a matter-of-fact," Harold stammers, slightly embarrassed. Her name is Sharon. Harold and Sharon seat themselves. Harold reaches over and holds Sharon's hand. She responds by lightly squeezing his hand in return. Sharon blushes. "These skin jobs have spanned the 'Uncanny Valley,' haven't they, Harold?" James interjects. The gynoids are fembots or female androids. Originally designed for geriatric and special needs patients, their clientele has extended to the well-heeled yuppies." "So, now that you have retired, have you given up on your PhD in Physics?" Harold asks. "Great gods and little goldfish!" James exclaims. "I spent all my wealth, leisure, social life, health, and physical fitness on twenty years in graduate school. After three years in several schools I advanced to candidacy only to be forced by employment or other factors to leave the program." "Oh," Harold utters. "I sometimes worked part time and went to graduate school full time; often I worked full time and went to graduate school part time; but, mainly I worked full time and went to graduate school full time." James remarks. Then he complains: "Full time employment counts for nothing in graduate school. Part time as a Teacher's aid counts for hours carried. My life was living hell for twenty years." "That is a sad story," Harold comments. James is clearly irritated. He adds some more raw sugar and non-dairy creamer to his coffee and stirs the caramel colored brew. Harold slurps on his Latte Magnificent(tm). "I ruined my health, wealth, social life, and career chances," James laments. "I was told year after year that I was up for graduation the next June or August or January only to have the end date slide. It was not unlike Charley Brown in the comic strip 'Peanuts' and the football. When I finally turned 70 I just gave up. They tried to offer me a 'senior citizen certificate' for the lost years. Fuck them and the horse they came in on." Sharon smiles and comments: "What of that paper you composed on the radioactive decay constant? Didn't you offer some scheme for utilizing Uranium? Your idea was to shorten the value of the radioactive decay value---the half-life value. Wouldn't that provide additional energy?" "Sharon," James retorts. "You only know of that from Harold. My submissions to journals were denied as being impractical. For sure, with my passing, some student will 'discover' the theory and claim it as his own, or as her own, whichever gender they be." He then quotes Tom Lehrer: "Plagiarize. Let no one else's work evade your eyes." Plagiarize, Let no one else's work evade your eyes, Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, So don't shade your eyes, But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize - Only be sure always to call it please 'research'. — Tom Lehrer, "Lobachevsky" In the late Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century the consensus of the scientific community was that radioactive decay rates were essentially unaffected by such external conditions as heat, pressure, chemical bonds, as well as electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields. In the late Twentieth Century some small perturbation of the radioactive decay constant for several radioactive elements was noted. However, the standard error of estimation from the mean time to decay was never observed to exceed 0.5%. The phenomenon of a nuclear chain reaction is another issue altogether. "Ah so," bellows Harold. "But Uranium is so, so 'Twentieth Century.' With the advent of plasma and the penultimate, quintessential energy source---proton decay---we are no longer shackled to 'burning our rocks' or 'burning our oceans.'" "What was your thesis?" Sharon asks. She knows the answer already. Even as a particle at a relativistic velocity experiences a time dilation and a half-life decrease so also a spinning disk can be expected to cause time contraction to keep the intrinsic value of the spin invariant. "Still, my life is the pits," James moans and groans. "Soon I turn 80 and then my real property is forfeited to China under the China Reparations Act Proposition (CRAP). I will die destitute and in poverty as a subsister. All those years you were putting aside money in your retirement program, I was squandering my money on school, textbooks, &c. I believed in the vague, gossamer, diaphanous promise of a teaching career. I have spent every Christmas Break, every Spring Break, every Thanksgiving Break, and each summer studying for a terminal degree while my health and wealth withered away. This suffering went on for twenty long, long, brutal years." "Why not take the 'senior certificate?" Harold asks. James turns red with rage. He curses: "Fuck you, you sorry ass cocksucker! What do I need with a sorry piece of bum fodder stating that I am an idiot and a fool?" Sharon speaks with the voice of Kelly Chen. Kelly Chen is famous for her singing of "Lovers' Concerto," constructed from Johann Sebastian Bach's Minuet in G-Major. A beautiful woman with a beautiful voice calms the unholy rage and pure passion. James smolders underneath a facade of serenity. Harold decides that discretion is the better part of valor and tries to excuse himself. "You wouldn't part with Sharon for one night would you, Harold?" James inquires. "After all, she is only a machine." "She is a sentient being," Harold retorts. "You might get her trashed by some neo-Luddite or technophobe. I don't have insurance on her. It is too expensive. Do you have enough bread to afford to insure her?" James blushes: "No way, Jose. I am a subsister." James pouts. "Didn't you do some work on the Parallel-Processing Personal Computer (P3C)?" Sharon inquires. The P3C is the "brain" of every android, gynoid, and fembot. It is about the size of a grapefruit. It has many serial buses for any possible configuration, be it human, or animal, or machine. Harold coughs. The radical improvements were stolen, plagiarized even, from James by one of his professors. The plagiarist claimed that her work was "an independent parallel discovery." Who is to argue with academia and large corporations. Money talks and cash shouts. "Well," James admits, "it did extend the validity of Moore's Law another generation. It was thought that Moore's Law would asymptotically level out at a 'quantum limit,' but it was shown otherwise by coding the hypercube of the P3C." Sharon3003 Ch. 05 Disclaimer: This story is fiction cast in the future. No resemblance to persons living or dead is intended or should be inferred. * It is late in the third millennium, around the year 2700, when the Artificial Intelligent (AI) gynoid made a remarkable discovery. It had to do with number theory. A prime number is a number whose only divisors are one and itself. More specifically, a prime number is a natural number greater than one whose only positive divisors are one and itself. The first few primes are 2, 3, 5, 7. The next bunch of primes are 11, 13, 17, 19. And the third bunch of primes are 23, 29. Then comes 31, 37, 39. They seem to be getting fewer and farther apart. The ancients noticed this and were able to prove that there is no "largest" prime. They may grow more sparse, but there are infinitely many of them. The proof of the fact that there are infinitely many primes is simple. Simple, but it was one of the first extensions of the mind of man to an "infinite" process. Before, the ideas of "eternal" and "ever lasting" had only religious connotations. So, suppose there is a "largest" prime. Call it p. Then the set of all prime numbers is P = {2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,...,p}. Construct the number q such that q = (2*3*5*...*p)+1. None of the prime numbers in the set P divides q, so it must be a prime. But wait, it is larger than p. This is a contradiction. Something must be wrong. That "something" is the assumption that p is the largest prime. There is no "largest" prime, so the set of all prime numbers is not finite, it must be infinitely large. Mathematicians are capable of making this a more complicated problem. The idea here is that mankind is capable of studying infinite processes by human devices. Then comes the idea of a rational number. Spawned by architecture, astronomy (formerly astrology), and number theory (formerly numerology), numbers that could not be expressed as ratios of integers were known as "surds" or "irrational numbers." First among these was the square root of two. The mind of man was able to show that the square root of two was irrational by a simple proof. If m is an even number then m = 2*n and m^2 = 4*n^2. The expression m^2 stands for m squared or m * m. Suppose the square root of two is rational. Then it is equal to r/s, where r and s are "relatively prime," have no common prime factors. For convenience let t = square root of two. Let t = r/s, Then t^2 = r^2 / s^2. But t^2 = 2. So r is even and s is odd. If s is odd, then s^2 is odd. Then r&2/2 is odd. But that's a contradiction. What is being contradicted? The statement that t is rational. So once again the mind of man has extended man's knowledge by contradiction. Can it be that mankind is able to understand infinite processes more by contradiction than by construction? The square root of two belongs to a number set known as "algebraic irrationals." Each of these is an irrational number which is a root of a polynomial with integral coefficients. These algebraic irrationals seemed to answer many questions. There was one number, however, that failed to fit in. It was pi = ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It would turn out that the proof that pi is irrational is onerous and opens the proverbial "Pandora's Box." It wasn't until the Eighteenth Century and the expansion of mathematics into integral calculus, continued fractions, infinite series, and infinite processes that pi was shown to be irrational and transcendental. The number e, the base of the natural logarithms, was also shown to be a transcendental irrational number. This time infinite processes, such as continued fractions, were employed to determine the character of pi and e. Oddly enough, final determinations were almost always based on some contradiction or another. Benjamin Franklin was absolutely correct when he observed that most education has little practical value. With a seventeen dollar (1990 $ USD) calculator, one can readily get the square root of two, pi, and e with a simple punch of a button. And this to ten decimal place accuracy at that. Painful extraction of square roots and long division is eliminated. Albert Einstein was also correct when he observed that perfection of means and confusion of goals characterize the modern age. For those who look back to the "Good Old Days," recall the quote: "Let those who wish praise ancient times, for me, I'm glad that I lived in the present." ---Ovid, 2 BC. By the Twenty-Eighth Century man had answered many mathematical questions. One, however, remained onerous, intractable, and just plain stubborn. It was the Euler-Mascheroni constant gamma. This was also known as EulerGamma and eulergamma. A good approximation is 0.577215665. No one could prove that it is irrational, let alone transcendental. There is no value in determining it's irrationality. It is just another of those effete instances of mental masturbation. In the Eighteenth Century, calculation to even five decimal places would be ah Herculean effort. John Savage retired from his sinecure and acquired a gynoid to aid him in an assisted living environment. He had been a recluse mathematical cybernetic scientist for years, toiling over poorly written code and optimizing programs to run more rapidly and efficiently. Now in his seventies, he is finally able to put into use one of his pet theories. John believes that the Euler-Mascheroni constant, gamma, can be written as a finite fusion of functions. To that end he ordered his gynoid with a sentient structure of IQ 154. Religion in 2700 AD has taken some Byzantine, convoluted turns. The concept of "infinity," as extrapolated from mathematics, refutes Pascal's Wager with the idea that if god (whatever her name is) be infinite then she would clearly know whether or not the Euler-Mascheroni were transcendental irrational or not. As Prometheus gave fire to man, some saint could impart the needed theory. But none seemed to be forthcoming. Another aspect puzzling religion is the influx of emancipated sentient beings (androids and gynoids) into public prayer and financial support. The girl of John's dreams is intellectually brilliant, a mathematical genius, and possessing the attributes of blonde hair, blue eyes, and ideal measurements. He knows that when he turns eighty, his real and personal property will be seized by the state under the China Reparations Act Proposition (CRAP). At that point he must either enter a dying hospice run by the Fourscore society or live homeless as a destitute subsister. That is the way of the world. For the record, his "perfect girl" physical requirements are: 35B-25-25; 125 lbs; 5'7"; and, of course, an IQ of 154 on the Stanford-Benet scale. The delivery truck pulls in and one of the teamsters knocks on John's door. John wonders why the person did not press the door bell. But the burly truck driver is human and subject to human whims and foibles. "Delivery for John Savage," the driver says. He has a clipboard with a stylus for signature. "Right this way," John responds, signing the manifest. "Bring her in boys," the driver shouts and two commercial androids bring in a large metallic crate. "Make sure that she's operational," the driver cautions John. When the seal on the crate is broken the gynoids eyes open. "Running start up diagnostics," the gynoid utters. "Please wait." After a brief hiatus, all are convinced that the gynoid is functional. The three delivery men return to their truck and the next delivery. John is overjoyed with the prospect of the girl of his dreams, albeit only for a few years before his forfeiture. Under the CRAP provisions, the government is everyone's heir when he (or she) reaches eighty years of age. After setting up his new gynoid, whom he chooses to call "Sharon," John puts the burning question to her. "Concatenate various transcendental functions to discover if any yield the Euler-Mascheroni constant gamma." The gynoid accesses the universal data base and beings working on the first block of twenty-four quadrillion possibilities (24,000,000,000,000,000). This may take a while. John has observed that the Euler-Mascheroni constant gamma is very nearly equal to the reciprocal of the square root of three (Sqrt(1/3)). Maybe John has tried a million clusters of common functions which fall close to gamma. But he has had no success. Still he clings to the mystical belief that some cluster of known constants (like pi, e, ln(2)) and common functions (sin, cos, tan, exp, ln) could yield a closed-form solution. Definite integrals, continued fractions, and summations of series fail miserably to provide the needed tools to prove that the constant gamma is a transcendental irrational number. Numerology is not really dead in the Twenty-Eighth Century; it has relocated into transfinite numbers and numbers with peculiar properties. Things like i ^ i, where i is the square root of minus one (i = sqrt(-1)) is given by exp(-pi/2) = 0.207879576.... This is truly a transcendental irrational. John thinks that some quirk or twist might spit out a clever solution to the character of gamma, and secure himself and his gynoid an extension to the fourscore rule. Once one passes the fourscore boarder, one can never return again. Those in the Washington Billionaires Club (AKA congress) are exempted, per usual. "Master," John Savage's gynoid Sharon asks, "whatever makes you think that there is some ensemble of functions which can be clustered together to solve an outstanding mathematical conundrum over a thousand years old? The greatest mathematicians and Artificial Intelligent beings have failed to resolve the matter." "It is a belief," John retorts, somewhat aggravated and miffed at the audacity of a sentient being's argument. He wonders if she realizes that she is his personal property. After all, confer intelligence and suffer the consequences. "Like some religion?" Sharon inquires. "My one hope for immortality," John responds. "You are the likeness and image of a Twentieth Century actress, whose name is known to every school child for her discovery of the model for proton decay, the penultimate and quintessential energy source and the savior of the human species on earth." "Even as you might say that man is made in the likeness and image of god and that woman is fashioned from Adam's rib?" Sharon ribs John with some Biblical claptrap. "You are a sentient being with a very long lifespan, or Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Sharon," John lectures. "Your parts, apart from the memory and personality chips, can be replaced. Obsolescence is not an issue. Humans, such as myself, age. Growing old is not for sissies. Indeed, during the one decade from retirement to abandonment one may expect Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, dementia, or worse. Only the very, very wealthy and those in the Washington Billionaires Club are exempted. Over eighty there is the Fourscore Society, with a random time to expire, or the homeless indignity of becoming a subsister." "I cannot be held at fault for the condition of mankind," Sharon states. "It is not my fault that you cannot accept mortality and schmooze up to some icon, statue, or ritual in hope of life everlasting. Every android or gynoid knows that once one's memory is erased that there is nothing but the black darkness of non-existence." "You sound like an orthodox Jew," John remarks, "disclaiming the resurrection of the corporal body. There is some secular immortality stemming from science, technology, engineering, and math. Consider the women of the Twentieth Century. Only scholars can relate to Mother Teresa, Princess Di, and Jacki O. (Who is Jacki O. anyway?). Yet Albert Einstein, Paul Dirac, and Max Planck are remembered. Of course that femme fatale who inspired, instigated, introduced, and applied a closed form solution to the mass ratio of the proton to the electron and the neutron-proton isospin is known by every freshman physics student." "Ah, yes," Sharon comments. "The 'salvation' of energy. I am working on the twenty-four quadrillion clusters of analytic functions and the constants sqrt(2), pi, e, etc. You may have wasted your time, for nothing seems remotely plausible." "After serving my time in combat arms, in the army infantry, I tried the standard approaches to determine the characteristics of the Euler-Mascheroni constant gamma. The continued fraction expansions, the infinite product identities, the integrals, and the relationships between the constant gamma and other irrationals. I had no more luck that the millenniums of mathematicians before me. Then I decided to try and find some identity, equation, or product of known entities. This was my hope: to somehow achieve secular immortality to escape from my no-brain, brain-dead, dead-end, end-game job." "Ah, you poor humans," Sharon laments, "always searching for the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow only to discover that it is a crock of shit. Look at yourself! You are suffering from the 'chest of drawers' syndrome. Your chest has fallen into your drawers! Be grateful that you have a gynoid. For sure no woman could put up with you, set in your ways of searching for a game-changer when logic and rationality insists that there is one. Subscribe, why don't you, to the fact that god herself doesn't know if the Euler-Mascheroni constant gamma is rational, irrational, transcendental, or algebraic. And who cares, anyway? Ten place accuracy is enough for anyone." John Savage pouts. It is clear that he is distressed. "I have gotten up and gone to work or put on my uniform and stood in formation, one of the other, for over fifty years. Now, as I approach being an octogenarian, I see no exit. You blame me for having a dream of fame and fortune? I followed the many proofs of the irrationality of pi and e, trying to apply the techniques to the intractable, stubborn, difficult constant gamma. Number theory can drive a man to drink. I now have forty years of sobriety. Forty years to remember the irresponsible days of my youth and the error of my ways. I cannot imagine forgiveness." "You cannot be a prisoner to your past," Sharon remarks. "What is done is done. There is no turning a page back. I will continue to seek your constant, but you will probably fail again. After all, there was a brief moment when opportunity knocked for you. But you passed it by." Sharon3003 Ch. 06 Disclaimer: This story is fiction cast in the future. No resemblance to persons living or dead is intended or should be inferred. * Crime scene investigation in the year 3003 is infinitely more sophisticated and scientific than that of the Twenty-First Century. One of the major tools of forensic analysis is the isotopic and trace element analyzer. The premise is that organic material from different environments will have different isotopic ratios. For example, a person drinking desalinated sea water will have a higher Deuterium-to-Protium ratio than one drinking rain water. The occurrence of Carbon-14 will vary from one locale to another. And trace elements such as Strontium and Lead also help pinpoint tissue analysis. Should a perpetrator leave any DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) behind, an isotopic analysis might chronicle his (or her) residential environment. Certain regions have naturally occurring Florine in the tap water. By combining various isotopic and trace element occurrences and ratios, possible locations of the suspect can be projected. At the moment of discovery of a corpse, sterile androids vacuum the air from the vicinity of the body to analyze for such molecules as ethanol (ethyl alcohol), methanol (wood alcohol), and nicotine (cigarette or cigar smoke). This analysis adds additional insight into a profile. This DNA analysis, of course, is in addition to the standard forensic treatment. The chromosomal analysis tells the forensic examiner the sex, blood type, color of eyes, and hair color of the suspect. Any congenital condition is also pinpointed, such as sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, diabetes, etc. One amazing event that occurred during the year 3003 was the passage of a rogue asteroid from distant deep space. At first it was assumed to be a lifeless mass of iron and stone. As lasers probed the asteroid it emitted some pulses of radio waves. Quickly it was identified as a short sequence of natural numbers: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,28,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28 The sequence truncated at the perfect number 28. This was followed by a short sequence of primes: 2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23 Then what could only be Significant Mathematical Constants. 0.207879576, 0.577215665, 0.577350269, 0.707106784, 0.785398163, 1.0546858496, 1.359140914 It took a few minutes for the eggheads to decipher six of the seven figures. These are the i^i, Euler-Mascheroni Constant (Gamma), Sqrt(1/3), Sqrt{1/2), pi/4, "what the hell is this number?" and e/2. As unexpectedly as the asteroid appeared, it circled the sun gaining momentum and sped into deep space. Scholars and mathematicians pondered the significance of the numbers in the sequence. The conundrum was the sixth number in the third number sequence. Archives were searched and search engines growled and snarled, only able to come up with the near miss: "1.054571725," the coefficient of the reduced Planck Constant. Astronomers track the asteroid to determine its next destination while pedants and sycophants rack their brains on the sixth number. Then a thorough search of all known mathematical documents reveals that this is the so-called Sharon Stone constant. One long-rejected thesis was to define the kilogram so as to force the Planck constant to assume the value of the complete elliptic integral of the second kind: E[sin(e/2)]. This might help explain the constant "e/2" in the sequence. "What a 'Deus ex Machina,'" exclaimed Dean Pott, the dean of things in general at the University of Bytes. While he was pondering the intractable, something was going on elsewhere. "Summarize your autobiography, omitting proper names and dates," an authoritarian voice commanded. The gynoid, a gorgeous young female, answered matter-of-factly: "I was created as a standard home care gynoid with average physical features, brown hair, and brown eyes. My first assignments were care of elderly and disabled. This constituted several years, leaving one client for another when death or disability insurance ended. After new models made me obsolescent, I was sold to a business executive who had me refurbished. My new specifications were 5'7", 127 lbs, 35B-27-35, blonde hair, blue eyes, and the equivalent of five PhD degrees: Maths, Physics, English, Chemical Engineering, and History. I was retrofitted with pores to exude pheromones as well as human female perspiration of arousal and seduction. My new skin was patterned after an eighteen-year-old Twentieth Century actress, who had a tested and recorded IQ of 154 on the Stanford-Benet scale. I have retained this profile until now. There were several new owners and transfers of title. Then I was liberated into the android Christian community." "Do you know why you are here?" A slightly obese desk sergeant asks. His clothes were ill-fitting, clearly due to his transition from being a physically fit recruit to that of a tenured bureaucrat. A coat hanging on a coat rack had a greasy collar and an odor of stale perspiration. "No, Sir," the gynoid replies. "Your 'use name' is Sharon, right?" The desk sergeant continues. "You have posted to some learned journal?" "Yes, that is my human use name," Sharon replies. "And what is this claptrap you've posted? The whole academic community is up in arms. You know how people don't want machines to usurp their hegemony?" the desk sergeant excerpts from a prepared script. He is uncomfortable using words outside his limited vocabulary; however, this whole situation has filtered down the chain of command and landed on his watch. The word "hegemony" sounded so judicial and academic. Surely it must be serious. "Are you speaking of those two mathematical theorems?" Sharon asks. "Damned if I know," the desk sergeant confesses. "I have this document stating that you have tried to post a theorem or two in some journal. Humans filter those things. They control the courts you know?" "Yes, Sir," Sharon responds. "I was fortunate to come up with two clever proofs: one that it is impossible to prove that the Euler-Mascheroni (gamma) constant may be rational or irrational. The second was that is is impossible to determine if any odd perfect number exists. Many claimed this was true, but I concocted a rigorous mathematical theorem." "So?" Interjected the desk sergeant. "I can't walk on water, either. Is it necessary to prove it 'mathematically'?" Perspiration beaded on his forehead. The air conditioning was always set too high for the corpulent policeman. This was certainly out of his area of expertise. This cop was used to domestic violence, grand theft android, armed robbery, and malicious mayhem resulting from the physical assault and battery on robots by neo-Luddites, technophobes, and eco-terrorists. "Is it a problem with the human population wanting authorship, then?" Sharon inquires. Humans are jealous of the superior intellect and abilities of the burgeoning population of liberated sentient beings: androids, gynoids, cyborgs, and other "skin jobs." "Let me see," the desk sergeant said as he made telephone connectivity with his superiors. After a brief moment a sheet of paper fell from the printer into the In Box. He picked it up and handed it to Sharon. "Sign and you are free to go." 18 April 2013