Insurance - part 18

[miriam_e]

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This is really a continuation of the previous chapter.
It is all blah blah blah, but I just love these concepts. I hope I don't bore you people. I think you're beginning to get an idea of how truly tedious I am. :)

Let me know what you think of the story.

Note that what follows contains adult concepts.
The love of two females for each other is central to this story so if you are offended by that stop reading now.

18 - quiz

Rachel was surprised. "Us? Telepathy?"

Sally too. "Why us?"

Dina smiled. "We like you both, you're a nice, sensible couple."

Rachel smirked at Sally, "Good thing you didn't see Sally this morning."

Sally put on an innocent look, "Moi?"

Dina and Marc led them back into their livingroom. Rachel and Sally settled together on the couch. Marc asked if they wanted anything -- drink? savouries? They thanked, but declined.

Sally asked them, "Is there a reason why you don't try the telepathy thing on yourselves?"

"Oh! We are." Dina turned, lifted the hair at the top of her neck and showed the little bulb of extra computing power attached to the cap.

Marc sat in an armchair and said, "A number of us are trying it out and it works brilliantly so far. Only couples who are unselfishly in love get chosen... so far. It's too early to try it with others. You two are a really interesting choice because of the human-android pairing."

Rachel asked, "What are the risks?"

Dina answered, "No one has found any so far. Some have suggested that there may be a chance of one mind dominating another. This happens between some people without telepathy. It may be too much of a risk to introduce telepathy into such relationships."

Marc added, "On the other hand some of us feel that domination may become impossible once people have telepathy. Each would feel and understand the other's pain and fears almost as their own. It may be too painful or degrading for someone to force another. But frankly we don't know yet. It hasn't emerged yet among those of us in the experiment."

Dina sat on the armrest of Marc's chair. He put his arm around her waist.

Sally asked, "Why did you mention hive minds? Is that a possible side effect?"

Dina smiled and said, "No. Asking people about that is like a test. People who have unreasonable fears of hive minds don't get told about the telepathy caps. The last thing we want is people to be scared of us. I actually should've mentioned hive minds earlier in the conversation. I stuffed up a bit there."

Sally continued, "Are hive minds possible through this?"

Marc answered, "Some of us think it is theoretically possible. But none have emerged yet. We all retain distinct characters and share only what we want to, just like any cap transmission, except instead of being limited to sense data or broad emotions, we can share complex concepts, memories, subtle shades of emotion.. all without words."

Dina added, "If you want to meet a hive mind Zoe can show you a veep one."

Rachel was surprised. "Oh! Is she back?"

"Yes. And wait till you hear what she's been working on." Dina chuckled.

Rachel raised her eyebrows with interest. "Can you tell us? Or should we wait for Zoe?"

Dina shook her head. "She calls it imaginary worlds."

"Huh?" Rachel looked puzzled. "All VR is imaginary."

Dina smiled. "No this is different. She designed an AI that imagines a world, and you can inhabit that."

Marc said, "Think of it this way. Everybody models the world around them in their own mind. You can remember and imagine the shape and appearance of your bedroom without having to be there. Our internal mental models of the world are much more efficient than standard computer geometric models."

Sally murmured, "Living in a computer's dreams..."

Rachel asked, "Would it look or feel any diferent from normal VR?"

Marc frowned and shook his head, "No, I don't think so... the end result should seem the same for the user... except that the worlds could be more detailed and complex, I guess."

Rachel was amazed. "More complex than Zoe's world?!?!"

Dina laughed. "Oh, no. Her world is unusual. As far as I know nobody builds worlds as complex and rich as Zoe does."

Sally shook her head and said, "So, getting back to telepathy... Got to admit to being intrigued."

Rachel nodded, looking at Sally, then asked Marc and Dina, "What's it like?"

He shrugged, "Well, communication is a bit different. It's done the same way, it's just much more full. When we talk or send speech we're always trying to find the right words to fit things. Sometimes they fit well, but sometimes they don't. There isn't any of that. We just share the thought itself instead of hoping to find the right words to describe it."

Dina smiled and looked at her guy, "When I want to tell Marc how much I love him, I just show him."

He sighed and smiled contentedly. It was obvious she was sending it now.

He said, green cheeks flushed with reddish tinge, "And I understand -- no mistakes, no clichés getting in the way."

Rachel asked, "What about the nice lies?"

Sally laughed, "Does this make my bum look too big?"

Marc smiled, "That was originally one of the reasons why only loving couples were chosen. It was considered a risk that could be minimised by them. In practice it hasn't come up. I don't know if that is because telepathy prevents the bad feelings or if the people chosen are already comfortable with each other's inner thoughts."

Dina said, "I suspect it's that telepathy stops misunderstandings."

Rachel asked, "What about finding out that the other person doesn't love you the way you thought they did?"

Marc answered again, "In every case so far it has enhanced the love between a couple rather than disillusioned them. We don't know why. Statistically our sample is too small and too special to draw conclusions."

Dina added, "We think it may be that the shared feelings snowball. Feeling one person's love magnifies the love the other has."

Rachel wondered, "Is there any chance of bad feelings doing the same?"

Marc said, "It hasn't with anybody yet, though again that could be a result of our special sample. People in love tend not to share bad feelings."

Sally asked, "What do you mean by 'people in love'?"

Dina said, "Good question. Love seems to have two parts. I'm not sure how much of this you know. Rachel would understand, being a psychologist. There's the initial stage, the hot flash of love, the infatuation. It is more a reward system used by the brain to matchmake one person with another. It isn't really an emotion. It boosts all the emotions, makes it hard to get to sleep, and so on. But it only lasts a short time. Androids don't have it."

Sally smiled and said, "Ah, yes. I've read about it. The wombat effect: eats roots and leaves."

Everybody chuckled.

Dina continued, "The second kind of love often takes over from the first and is longer term. It's all about trust and being comfortable with your partner. It seems to happen to a lot of people who have been together for a long time, but it doesn't always happen and it usually requires work. It is the love that arranged marriages depended upon. It is the love between friends; the love between human and dog."

Sally added, "Between android and human."

Dina nodded.

Marc said, "The second love is the one we look for. The first one is too unreliable."

Dina added, "There is another thing that some people call love, but which is more like ownership. It is when people feel they have a right to demand things of another person. Society has encouraged this in so many forms that it is deeply embedded in all our psyches. One of the interesting things about the telepathy cap is the way it exposes that. It's very uncomfortable, when you're deeply and unselfishly love your partner, to find you still have such unworthy feelings. The good thing is that it lets us understand and get rid of them."

"So how long has this experiment been going on?" Rachel wanted to know.

Dina said, "For us, a couple of weeks. All the people using telepathy caps? Not sure. A couple of months I think."

Sally asked, "How many people?"

Marc said, "Just four couples so far."

Rachel asked, "Any idea what will come of it?"

Dina and Marc smiled, sighed and looked at each other. Dina spoke, "All the things you both mentioned earlier, and the straightening out of human thought. I have a feeling that eventually people will link to each other in order to add to their lives and improve themselves as a group. I really doubt hive minds will come about from this because you never actually merge, but I can't help thinking that people using this in a group will be able to accomplish far more than groups of people joined by just language ever could. The way it can extend your mind is incredible. My maths has never really been very good, but since doing this I've found my mathematical abilities growing. At first I'd ask Marc and he'd show me how he understood a mathematical problem. It was breathtaking. Lately I've noticed that I don't need to ask him so much anymore because I am starting to understand maths the way he does."

Marc nodded, "The same here. I've never really understood how people think and a lot of emotions have always been a bit of a mystery. Understanding how people think from Dina's point of view was like a revelation. I just had no idea. You could have explained it in words forever and I wouldn't have got it, but this cap... wow!"

Sally asked, "Has anybody ever wanted it undone?"

Dina shook her head, "No. And it's easy to see why. It would feel like having your ability to talk removed. You don't have to talk, but to lose it would not feel good. It's the same with this. You don't have to share thoughts and feelings, but to lose the ability once you'd gained it, would be... gosh... not nice."

Rachel looked at her lover and raised her eyebrows in silent question. Sally smiled and nodded then kissed her on the cheek.

Rachel looked at Dina and Marc for a moment. "OK, how do we do this?"

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