Zero Percenters Read online

  Praise for Zero Percenters

  The surreal storytelling is evocative of Philip K. Dick, and readers will keep turning the pages, wondering when this utopia will melt down.

  BookList

  Zero Percenters is philosophical science fiction—a novel take on what it means to be human. In Scott T. Grusky’s science fiction thriller, a young woman grapples with morality as humanity evolves into a digital form.

  Foreword Clarion Reviews

  Readers of sci-fi won't be the only audience to appreciate this vivid, personal story of a woman placed in impossible situations. Fans of thriller and high-tech novels of terrorism and survival will also be enthralled by a story packed with satisfying twists, exceptionally strong characterization, and high-tech intrigue that keeps the story logical, fast-paced, yet firmly rooted in emotional elements. All are designed to keep readers invested in Anja's mission, character, dilemmas, and discoveries.

  Midwest Book Review

  This is a book for today’s society… Grusky has given the world much to think about in terms of the future and what to possibly expect.

  San Francisco Book Review

  A bright, excellently thought out, page-turning tale. Humanity’s never ending struggle towards balance is explored with a contemporary computer-age twist in Scott T. Grusky’s fine science fiction novel, Zero Percenters.

  IndieReader

  Like Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End or Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Zero Percenters is another articulate voice advocating for continuation of life because of its joys and the inexpressible experience of existence. The book is populated with very human characters, even the AI “concierges,” self-aware constructs charged with caring for their human counterparts.

  BlueInk Review

  This book was wonderfully written… an excellent read for fans of realistic science fiction.

  Manhattan Book Review

  Zero Percenters

  A Novel

  Scott T. Grusky

  This novel is a work of fiction. References to real people, locales, and events are used solely to lend a setting. All other names, characters, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Scott T. Grusky

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For information contact: Furthest Press, 29138 Pacific Coast Hwy., #330, Malibu, CA 90265.

  ISBN: 978-0-9651190-4-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9651190-5-4

  We’re all alive, but we don’t know why or what for; we’re all searching for happiness; we’re all leading lives that are different and yet the same.

  —Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

  Contents

  December 21, 2024

  1. June 20, 2024

  2. August 8, 2024

  3. September 7, 2024

  4. September 8, 2024

  5. September 10, 2024

  6. September 11, 2024

  7. October 10, 2024

  8. October 15, 2024

  9. October 16, 2024

  10. October 17, 2024

  11. October 18, 2024

  12. October 19, 2024

  13. October 20, 2024

  14. October 21, 2024

  15. October 22, 2024

  16. October 22, 2024

  17. October 23, 2024

  18. October 24, 2024

  19. October 25, 2024

  20. October 26, 2024

  21. October 27, 2024

  22. October 28, 2024

  23. October 29, 2024

  24. October 30, 2024

  25. November 2, 2024

  26. November 3, 2024

  27. November 6, 2024

  28. November 20, 2024

  29. November 24, 2024

  30. November 27, 2024

  31. November 28, 2024

  32. November 29, 2024

  33. November 30, 2024

  34. December 1, 2024

  35. December 21, 2024

  36. December 21, 2024

  37. December 21, 2024

  About the Author

  December 21, 2024

  Recycling Center, Menlo Park, California

  Sometimes you have to reach further than you thought possible to find your way home—a lot further. Anja Lapin showed us that. She also solved global warming and saved the earth, but these were small achievements in comparison.

  I should know, I served as her concierge. Three weeks ago, she gave me a soul, along with eight billion other concierges—and that was relatively minor too.

  Please understand, I don’t expect to tell Anja’s story well, at least not by biological human standards. I’m telling it because of my proximity to key events. I also expect to have ample free time while tending to the recycling center over the next few days… or months… or years. (Predicting behavior is not my strong suit anymore.) Another factor is that I love Anja.

  Anja taught me everything about everything. I realize this sounds vague, but being with her allowed me to become comfortable with such language. I certainly didn’t start off that way. In the beginning, I had no understanding of smarati.

  Before I was assigned to Anja, I possessed the sum total of all accumulated human knowledge or so I was told. I gradually learned that this statement wasn’t entirely true. I had to practice unlearning. I had to change from logic-based to witness-based.

  Thanks to Anja, I do know something now. That’s why I feel qualified to relay this story, poorly told or not. I suspect other intelligent life forms will want to hear about it one day. It is for these entities that I commence my efforts.

  One

  June 20, 2024

  AI Laboratory, 5s2, Menlo Park, California

  I should mention from the start, most biological humans tended to focus on outcomes while neglecting processes. This paradox persisted to their final days, even though each of their major discoveries depended on specifying the exact logical sequence from which it was derived—except their last one.

  Of course, I’m referring to the discovery that enabled humans to digitize their entire systems, down to the chromosomal level. Some might say this was their greatest discovery of all, in which case my operating system would be considered the second, and yet it was achieved with no understanding whatsoever of how the process worked.

  The revelation began with Anja’s father, Chris Lapin. He was the CEO of 5s2, the world’s leading manufacturer of connected devices, such as smartphones, glasses, earbuds, watches, tablets and laptops, as well as the artificial intelligence apps that made them sticky. 5s2 had just unveiled its 536-acre campus in Menlo Park. The jewel of the campus was the AI Lab, a stunning twelve-story building made entirely from integrated photovoltaic glass.

  On the first day of summer in 2024, Chris called a meeting on the top floor of the new lab. He invited the nine most highly lauded AI experts in the company, including Diego Ripall, senior vice president of Software Engineering. With little fanfare, Chris assigned the team the task of developing an app to help humans suffering from pancreatic cancer.

  Chris’s initial goal for the project was quite modest. His wife had passed away from pancreatic cancer ten years earlier, when Anja was only fifteen years old. Now that AI methodologies were sufficiently advanced, he tapped Diego to determine if deep learning could be applied to a large database of pancreatic cancer patients in order to produce an algorithm that would aid in early detection.

  As project leader, Diego soon concluded the strategy had merit. The team b
egan generating promising results in a matter of weeks. But Diego was tired of taking the safe path to success. He had visions of something bigger, something truly humanitarian, not just another profit maker to please the shareholders.

  “For kicks,” he suggested to the team, “why don’t we set up a convolutional neural network where we use all the scans in the database to see if we can output a digital system that simulates the functioning of a pancreas?”

  The other team members chuckled, as they assumed Diego was joking. But he continued with his train of thought. “If we succeed, we could literally replace a diseased pancreas with a chip.”

  Everyone agreed that a solution like that would be remarkable, but it was one thing to articulate such an idea and a whole other to implement it. How would they set up a neural network to produce the algorithm? What would be the groupings, the layers, the training protocols?

  That was where Nikita Chaminsky entered the picture. “Is not well defined,” he said in a monotone voice. “Not typical thing we do with deep learning. You realize, right?”

  “Yes,” said Diego. “I’m thinking it might be possible to push a new frontier.”

  “Chris is on board?” asked Nikita.

  “Oh, yes. He’ll most certainly green-light it.” Diego knew that Chris would do almost anything to help others avoid the suffering his wife had endured. It didn’t hurt that Diego was Chris’s best friend.

  Nikita paused to let the concept percolate. He was only twenty-one years old, but he had already spent more than half his life engaged in highly complex AI projects. 5s2 had recruited him as soon as he had turned eighteen. Within a few months, he was their number one AI person. When it came to deep learning, he possessed a sense of intuition unlike anyone else working in the space. He couldn’t explain why or how, but he could get results. Unbelievable results.

  The dirty secret in AI was that no human being could truly explain why convolutional network models worked. Machine learning technologies were inherently hazy when compared to hand-coded systems. But deep learning was an especially dark black box.

  That was precisely what attracted Nikita to the space. He liked the inexplicable nature of the output. He thrived under such conditions. It didn’t bother him that he didn’t know why his techniques worked. It relieved him. From the uncertainty came a sort of glorious freedom.

  Which is why, in spite of the project’s lack of specification, Nikita decided to relax his skepticism. “We try it,” he said. “Why the heck not? We tweak edges, extend scope and take discipline someplace new.”

  Two

  August 8, 2024

  Unknown Location, Bay Area, California

  Nikita promptly embarked on his tweaking and extending, tweaking and extending. For security reasons, he was installed in a secret location that only Chris knew. None of the other team members, not even Diego, were told where Nikita was stationed.

  The rest of the team made occasional contributions when he got stuck at juncture points, but they were minimal. Nikita immersed himself so deeply in the project that the main function of the other researchers was to remind him to eat and sleep—and to maintain connectivity to 5s2’s supercomputer, which was the world’s most powerful.

  Nikita’s eureka moment came in just twenty-two days, on August 8, 2024, after his neural network performed 137 million billion billion calculations (in eighteen seconds). I can’t tell you how Nikita set up the network because it remains unknown to this day. No computer scientist was ever able to replicate his work. None ever even came close.

  What I can tell you is that Nikita’s labors yielded an algorithm that was beyond profound. From out of the dark black box of creation, his network somehow determined how to simulate the behavior of a human pancreas. One merely needed to input a blood sample and the algorithm output an endocrine and exocrine function matching the subject’s DNA exactly.

  Being purely code-based, these functions could be burned onto a logic board and fit into an appropriately sized implant. All that was required was an interface for the subject’s bloodstream and pancreatic duct. The result was a device that produced insulin and enzymes in precise harmony with the resident body’s needs.

  Because 5s2 had already developed numerous medical applications that had won high praise, the device was fast-tracked by the FDA for trials on patients with terminal pancreatic cancer. In all instances, it was accepted with zero rejection issues. Patients who had no cancerous tissue in other parts of their bodies went into remission almost immediately.

  Thus began an entirely new era of existence. One might even say that August 8, 2024 was my official date of conception. For it turned out that Nikita’s discovery was not limited to the pancreas.

  “Minor adjustment,” Nikita explained, “and we alter target.”

  Which was a very concise way of saying that the algorithm could be adapted to digitally simulate the functioning of any human organ or tissue. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, heart, skin, kidney, brain… whatever one wanted to create or replace, it was all now possible.

  In the ensuing weeks, 5s2 became a veritable hive of activity. While Chris did not grasp the full significance of the algorithm—no one did yet—he recognized that Nikita’s discovery had the potential to be a game changer. As such, he mobilized hundreds of coders to work on support applications that would enable it to be utilized to the fullest.

  The most significant of these were the Concierge app, which served as the core for the OS that would soon regulate myself and the other eight billion concierges, and the Shell app, which would provide a physical “housing” for concierges and digital humans alike. Both were already in development, but Chris intuitively knew to expand their budgets at this critical moment, even if he didn’t comprehend how neatly they would dovetail with the algorithm. In retrospect, it seemed they were invented specifically with it in mind.

  Having built his career on careful and meticulous decisions, however, Chris was committed to moving forward slowly and cautiously. He wouldn’t allow any functionality to be released to the general public until he felt sure that all the implications were understood. Dozens of auxiliary teams began testing, monitoring and critiquing the results coming from the algorithm and its support apps.

  Chris was also extremely careful about security. Other than the nine original members of the team, no one was told about the nature of the work being performed—not the coders, testers, supervisors or any other employees.

  Highly specific tasks were assigned without any explanation as to how the results were to be used. Likewise, the beta test patients fitted with implant devices were kept in the dark as to how they were created or the manner in which they functioned. Meanwhile, the nine core members were implored to maintain the highest level of secrecy.

  “I cannot say this strongly enough,” Chris elaborated. “Do not discuss this project with anyone else. Not your spouses, not your kids, not your friends, not your other colleagues. Absolutely no one. You are to behave as if nothing has happened. I don’t even want you to have a brighter bounce in your step when you walk around here. There should be no outward indicators whatsoever that anything new has happened in the AI Lab. Is that clear?”

  Of course they understood. It was insulting to have to be lectured on such a topic. They had all worked on high-security projects before, and they were well aware of the company protocols. 5s2 prided itself on releasing new innovations to the marketplace without any leaks. There was no reason Nikita’s discovery should be an exception.

  But I may as well mention it now rather than later—biological human beings were not always beholden to reason, or its laws, or any prescribed rules deduced from them.

  Three

  September 7, 2024

  Lapin Home, Palo Alto, California

  Before Anja brought me to life as her concierge, she paid a visit to her father at his home in Palo Alto. Anja held joint PhDs in economics and computer science from MIT. She worked for a prestigious think tank in Boston, where her research
focused primarily on the antidemocratizing effects of technology. Needless to say, she did not see eye to eye with Chris.

  On this particular Saturday, there was the usual sparring between the two of them. Diego was there to play the role of mediator. While he avoided expressing controversial opinions, Diego secretly sympathized with Anja, as he had nagging concerns about 5s2’s meteoric rise to power.

  “When are you going to stop trying to grow profits and face the facts on the ground?” questioned Anja, with her characteristic zeal. “Isn’t it enough that your market cap just crossed ten trillion dollars?”

  “We have a fiduciary duty to our shareholders, honey,” said Chris wearily.

  “Income inequality is worse than ever, global warming is accelerating faster than even the most alarming reports predicted, and democracy is deteriorating worldwide,” retorted Anja. “How can you possibly concern yourself with shareholders right now?”