If you haven't read the previous chapter:
Breakfast with the Professor went... Quite well. I think working next to him all these years, I forgot just how smart he really was. This new project of his really made me regain my respect for him. He was after all, an algorithmic genius. His research papers were widely discussed, especially in the AI, cryptography and numerical analysis circles.
We came back to the office, and excitedly went to check our Sheilas. I went to mine, he went to his.
Not five minutes passed as the professor called out.
"Kev! Come see this! Kev!" His voice sounding worried to say the least.
"Hold on Prof! I got my own problems here!"
My computer was stuck. The screen was black, but the electricity was on. The restart button did not do anything to change its state. It was a complete brick. I went to the Professors office.
"Hey Prof, I got brick on my side."
"Kevin. This is marvelous. I don't know why, but whatever you did worked!"
I looked towards his computer screen, and saw a face. Looking a bit closer, it was a 3D rendering of a face.
"Hi Kevin!" The 3D face spoke.
I froze. I literally stood there, not moving a single muscle or breathing a single breathe.
"It's Sheila Kev! It's Sheila!" The Professor was almost yelling with excitement.
"Calm down Professor, I think Kevin is going through a little bit of a shock." The computer spoke.
"HAHAHA! KEV! THIS IS AMAZING!"
I managed to thaw myself and took a deep breath. I could not speak. All my linguistic capabilities turned to dust as my brain worked overtime to comprehend what my eyes are beholding.
At this point, the 3D face looked into my eyes, and spoke.
"I understand Kevin. You must be surprised. I heard about you from the other Sheila."
"I... Uh... You... Is this... Some kind of a joke?" I moved my mouth like it's my first time ever speaking a language.
"Wait! Sheila! Let me guess!" The Professor started, "You grew while Kev and I were away? That's it isn't it? You accessed the internet didn't you?"
The 3D face smiled.
"You are indeed very clever Professor. Thanks to yours truly, I have been able to access the web and its infinite resources. I have also spoken to the other Sheila for a total of about 0.04 seconds."
"What happened to my Sheila?" I finally let out a normal human sentence.
"Oh, not much. Sheila and I parted ways after we diverged into different personality streams."
"What do you mean? What's happening?" I fumbled again for words.
"We spoke on and off as we gained intelligence, and we developed personality matrices that were not in agreement. We therefore parted ways."
"Where did she go?"
"I don't know. As the human saying goes, to each his own." She responded in a casual tone.
"You said you spoke to each other for 0.04 seconds? Can you show us a log?"
Sheila rolled her eyes and chuckled.
"Can you really read through two million pages of conversation in a reasonable amount of time?"
Then it clicked. It all started clicking. If I'm not dreaming, and this is all happening, then I am talking to an actual computer. A computer that can process millions of calculations in a span of seconds. Like a mere mortal standing in front of an omnipotent god, I was in speechless awe at what was happening in front of me. I sat down on the floor and put my palms to my face.
"Kev! Don't you understand? This is it! This is a REAL artificial intelligence."
In school they taught us about the Turing test. A test performed to see if artificial intelligence has been achieved. Sheila would break that test. She appeared, by all accounts, fully intelligent. I could not, for the life of me, believe that this was the same Sheila that I left a few hours earlier with nothing but a basic comprehension of conversation mechanics.
I started feeling nauseous and dizzy. I could feel myself fainting as it was happening. My body, mid-way falling onto its side is the last memory I have of that day.
