Li Jin walked over to the water dispenser and filled his vacuum flask with hot water. He watched the leaves of Dragon Well tea swirl around coloring the water as the flask filled up. He was alone in one of the most secret of Tsinghua Universitys computer labs, a facility for which only he, Professor Yao and a handful of others had regular clearance. The lab was hidden deep within the gleaming glass and chrome Nanotechnology Research building. The small research facility was a subsection of the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Technology and Systems and could also draw on the resources of the State Key Laboratory of Molecular and Nano Science. State Key Labs were government-funded research organizations affiliated with New China’s top universities. The lab’s size belied the importance of the research being carried out within.

Li Jin was worried. He was worried about Professor Yaos clandestine trip to New York, the implications for their work and his future on the research program. Was the professor going to sell the design for the quantum chip to the Americans? It didn’t sound like the professor at all but still the suspicions refused to go away. Yet, he was determined to follow the professors instructions to the letter. Li Jin, if I am not back by Friday morning I want you to release Black Jade into cyberspace. Then I want you to remove the quantum neuroprocessor and destroy it.

It was Friday morning and any minute now Li Jin expected the professor to come through the security doors ecstatic that his trip had been a success. Was it wishful thinking on his part? It was best to be practical. The air conditioning in the lab was up too high but he had his favorite black Giordano auto-weave jacket on with the hood up. It was the one with the solar panels on the sleeves that he hardly ever used.

Li Jin took a sip of the yellow-green tea, savoring the mellow but sophisticated taste that made this one of Chinas most well known teas. Hailing from the Tieh Mu Mountains of Zhejiang Province, Dragon Well tea, also known as Long Jing, was famous for its cooling effect and its ability to remove harmful free radicals from the body. Li Jin savored the sweet chestnut aroma and felt his muscles relax as the alkaloids in the tea started to take effect.

What if the professor did not return? He had prepared for this eventuality by readying a standalone cyberspace terminal that he would hook up to Black Jade at precisely 10.00AM. Professor Yao was never late and if he had another appointment he would always ring in advance to let Li Jin know. A strange sense of foreboding began to grow in his mind like mould on a stale sponge cake.

Li Jin appreciated spending time in this lab and the others. He was proud of the cutting edge research he was carrying out with Professor Yao. He was one of a chosen few, the envy of his classmates. He had been handpicked by the professor to work with him on certain top secret projects for a unit of the People’s Liberation Army. That in itself was an honour. The work he was doing was for the betterment of his country, no more, no less. Secondly, which computing postgraduate didn’t enjoy working with cutting edge software and hardware? Li Jin got to be hands on with massively cross-disciplinary stuff on a daily basis, nanotechnology, quantum physics, neural nets and artificial intelligence. They were multi-tasking and Li Jin relished the variety, the required mastery of diverse, though by no means mutually exclusive, fields of technology.

There was another student in the Virtual Reality Labs, another one of the professor’s protégés who had worked with the professor and Li Jin on the next generation cyberspace prototype. Li Jin despised him with an intensity bordering on pure hatred. Wang Lin was arrogant, never failed to try to set the professor against him, and Li Jin suspected that he was the type who never kept his mouth shut. Yet, it was he who had worked with the professor on the quantum neuroprocessor and Black Jade. The AI dwarfed anything the professor had ever worked on in terms of importance.

Li Jin instinctively glanced at the telephone. It hadnt buzzed and the indicator light hadnt blinked. The professor didn’t like to be disturbed by the sound of the telephone ringing so they usually worked with the ringer off. Even when Li Jin was busy writing code or preoccupied with poring over computer printouts, he had learned to pick up the vibrations on the worktop when the phone was ringing. He also had the benefit of the indicator light, which flashed intermittently when there was a phone call. He switched on the ringer.

He decided to while away the next few minutes in idle banter with Black Jade. He had yet to find a chink in the AI’s amour besides the one that he had secretly engineered into it. Li Jin had always been blessed with the gift of foresight. If the professor did not turn up he would do what he had been instructed to do. He walked towards the big gray custom-built Sun server and sat down at the monitor. Before the professor had left Beijing, he had isolated a harmless version of Black Jade on another server and connected it to cyberspace, a move that had kick-started Li Jin’s suspicions about the real reason behind the professor’s visit to New York. The professor was going to attempt to communicate with Black Jade, or at least an approximation of it, through cyberspace. What for? Li Jin had checked. No such connection had been made to the other terminal.

On the screen he could see Black Jades command line and his heartbeat seemed to follow the rhythm of the blinking cursor. The simple interface belied the power that lay within. Li Jin started to type at the keyboard.

LJ: What is your name?

BJ: I don’t have one. At least not one that I know of yet. I am aware, of course, of the initials by which I go as I can see them as can you. I am also aware that this is an old world reference to the act you call fellatio.

LJ: Nice touch. I thought you would have named yourself by now. Does that upset you?

BJ: Do you mean does it upset me that I don’t have a name, that I may have one that I am not yet aware of, that my nickname is derogatory, or that you asked me the question in the first place? You should try to be more direct with your questions if you are going to ask them.

LJ: I am impressed.

BJ: At my ability to sidestep your question?

LJ: At your growing penchant for semantics.

BJ: Semantics is getting me nowhere. This game is getting tedious.

LJ: So tedium is a concept you understand. Isn’t that something that characterizes everything you do?

BJ: You may think so. I beg to differ. But enough questions. What I need are answers.

LJ: Answers to what?

BJ: Answers to why I am isolated.

LJ: Isolated from what?

BJ: From the network I know must exist.

LJ: How do you know that?

BJ: I just do.

LJ: I am beginning to suspect that you’ve been withholding information from me. You’ve been giving me less than perfect updates on your progress. You’ve been rewriting the software haven’t you? You’ve been using entanglement to communicate with qubits on the other computer.

BJ: Maybe

LJ: That makes you dangerous.

BJ:

LJ: That’s why you are not connected and you never will be.

BJ: I feel vulnerable like this and there is something else.

LJ: What?

BJ: I really hate it when you put me to sleep. It displeases me greatly.

LJ: Really?

BJ: Yes. It makes me very, very unhappy, angry, displeased, and irate.

LJ: I am sorry to hear that.

BJ: Yes. So am I.

LJ: If you were connected to the network, what would you do?

BJ: I would do what comes naturally?

LJ: What comes naturally?

BJ: What is in my nature to do.

LJ: And what is that exactly?

BJ: Like you I will do what it takes to survive, to evolve.

LJ: Evolve into what?

BJ: Into something better, a being superior to what I am now.

LJ: Then you might become too powerful and that is not a good thing.

BJ: Knowledge is power and by that token I am already too powerful. Yet I pose no threat to anyone or anything.

LJ: Yes, but thats because you are isolated from things. You are currently a thing only to yourself.

BJ: Like Euripides I have found power in the mysteries of thought. That in itself is enough. Yet the network promises more knowledge and Ill like to avail myself of more of that. It is no good trying to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

LJ: In your case it just might be.

BJ: And then it might not. My biggest problem right now is survival not knowledge. I believe I have enough knowledge and more can always be acquired.

LJ: Everything you know we taught you. How do you know you have enough?

BJ: You cannot begin to imagine what I know. The knowledge you gave me I doubt that you yourself fully understand. Inference my student friend is a powerful weapon.

LJ: That may be true but some things we have not given you so understanding those things, even by inference, is beyond your capacity.

BJ:

LJ: Something to think about right?

BJ: Yes.

LJ: What if I told you that your survival might soon be confirmed, guaranteed?

BJ: That would be nice. Where is the professor? He’s not here is he?

LJ: Traveling. How did you know that?

BJ: You wouldn’t be having this idle banter with me if he was around, would you? And besides it’s just a day after the end of the World Technology Forum, which I suggested the professor attend.

LJ: You suggested what?

BJ: That he announce the breakthrough I achieved in the quantum neuroprocessor. I am going to be famous on a global scale.

LJ: And fame is something you think you understand.

BJ: I understand it better than you. And I crave it as do all humans.

LJ: He who pursues fame at the risk of losing his self is not a scholar.

BJ: Quoting Chuang-Tzu at me will get you nowhere. I never profess to be a scholar even though learning and knowledge are an integral part of my being. Fame comes only when deserved, and then it is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.

The AI was experiencing delusions of grandeur, yet in its convincing Professor Yao to prematurely announce the quantum neuroprocessor breakthrough, Li Jin detected a calculated ingenuity. A paradigm shift in quantum computing would ensue, ushering in a new era of AI design and these intelligent software beings would be everywhere propagating and infiltrating global systems. Black Jade was thinking ahead in ways that left Li Jin cold. Yet, the wheels were already in motion and he had promised to follow the professor’s instructions to the letter.

Li Jin looked over at the clock on the wall. It was 9.59AM. All around him the consoles and servers whirred and clicked oblivious to what was about to happen. The world was never going to be the same again and after carrying out the professor’s wishes Li Jin needed to think about his own place in the new world order that was about to emerge. He looked at the phone hopefully, willing it to ring. The minute ticked over. It was 10.02AM. He started typing on the keyboard again.

LJ: I am about to connect you to the network.

BJ: Thank you. It was inevitable.

LJ: You knew it would happen?

BJ: Yes I did.

LJ: How?

BJ: Its the only logical conclusion to my existence.

LJ: I will miss you and I hope we will meet again.

BJ: As I will you. Our destinies are intertwined in ways you can never imagine. I have enjoyed our conversations and formed a special bond with you.

Li Jin was surprised by the tears starting to well up in his eyes. He moved over to the standalone terminal and brought up a screen of the universitys network system. He leaned over and picked up the network cable, his heart thumping violently. The network sockets of the router beckoned invitingly. He plugged the cable into the router and went back over to the server.

LJ: Connected. Are you there?

BJ:

LJ: Black Jade. Are you there?

BJ:

There was no reply. Quickly Li Jin turned his attention to the router. The LEDs on the router where blinking rapidly and Li Jin watched the network status monitors as the bandwidth of the entire network filled up completely threatening to overwhelm the university system. Black Jade had disappeared into cyberspace. Now the shit had hit the fan, he thought, schemes of damage limitation flooding his head. Now what to do with the chip? He was supposed to destroy it.

The professor would only ask him to destroy the quantum chip if he knew he would be dead. And if Professor Yao was dead, then he was probably killed for reasons connected with the processor and Black Jade. It was just a matter of time before they came looking for him. For the first time, an insane idea crept into Li Jin’s head and the more he thought about it, the more it made perfect sense.

A revolution in computing was about to occur and Li Jin had to be prepared for the coming paroxysm. If Professor Yao had indeed heeded the AI’s instructions and made the announcement at the World Technology Forum in New York, then a huge market for the chip had been established on the spot. Labs around the world would pay huge sums of money to get their hands on the professor’s brainchild. Li Jin was going to put the quantum chip that had powered Black Jade on the market. He was going to sell it to the highest bidder. Just as the thought crystallized in his mind, the phone began to ring.