Ray N. Kuili's Blog: The Moral Gene - Story Three of The Dawn , page 5
June 4, 2014
Prohibited Concept: Chapter 7 of EDEN CAN WAIT has been posted
Chapter 7: Prohibited Concept of EDEN CAN WAIT has been posted online.
Unlike my neat, but nearly Spartan apartment, this place was an exquisitely furnished, luxurious office.
Behind a large desk sat my old acquaintance—the stocky bearded man from the interview panel. In the opposite corner in a lavish black leather armchair sat—or rather curled up—a slim striking brunette in her mid-thirties. If their smiles were any indication, both were delighted to see me. Apparently, the days of being greeted by stern faces of ESI employees were over.
“Mr. West,” said the bearded man, his joyous tone fully matching his smile, “we are very pleased to see you here. Welcome aboard!”
“Good morning,” I replied, doing my best to sound businesslike.
“Please,” the man motioned me to a chair on my left, “have a seat.”
I sat down. The chair’s comfort was a great improvement over the steely touch of the metal seat that I had been offered by the same person a couple of weeks ago. Life was certainly getting better.
“Allow me to introduce Ms. Larson,” the man gestured to the brunette.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. West,” she said with a charming smile in the same crisp and clear voice I had heard on the phone.
“Should you pass the test, you and Ms. Larson will be working closely together,” elaborated the bearded man once I had expressed my pleasure of meeting Ms. Larson.
“But more about that in a moment. As for me, we’ve already met, though unfortunately I could not introduce myself last time we spoke. My name is Leon Tessier.”
“Dr. Leon Tessier,” emphasized his guest.
Tessier waved away her clarification with an air of dignified modesty. It was a gesture of a political celebrity asking his cheering supporters to stop making noises and start listening.
“I have the privilege to be in charge of this research facility.”
I nodded.
“Did you have a good sleep?” Larson asked from her armchair.
Something in her tone made me suspect that it was more than a mere good mannered small talk question.
“Certainly,” I said. “Plus, I didn’t have to worry about lowering my blinds for the night.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Tessier said reassuringly. “Everybody does.”
It was only at that point that I noticed that his room had at least one thing in common with mine—a complete absence of windows.
Read Chapter 7 of EDEN CAN WAIT on or Jukepop Serials.
May 30, 2014
The only true mirror you’ll ever need…
The only true mirror you’ll ever need…
May 8, 2014
Welcome to the Hotel California: Chapter 6 of EDEN CAN WAIT has been posted
I stepped out of the car and found myself in a large parking garage. It looked pretty much like any other parking garage I had been to. The only noticeable difference was the amount of colored pipes that swirled at the ceiling like countless snakes.
“This way,” said the driver.
He had already extracted my belongings from the trunk and was pointing to the elevator on the left.
While we walked toward the elevator I noticed a few other cars with tinted windows: a couple of Nissans like the one we had arrived in and a large SUV. The garage was half-empty, but there were still quite a few cars, considering the time of the day. I managed to take a quick peek at my phone and found, almost with gloomy satisfaction that it was as useless as it had been in the car.
Getting in and out of the elevator required scanning the driver’s cardkey. I was hardly impressed—by now I was expecting retina scanners and full-body x-ray machines.
We ended up on the second floor, which immediately reminded me of checking into a cheap but really well-maintained hotel. I was ushered down a very neat brightly lit hallway with numbered cream doors on both sides.
“Your room,” said the driver, opening the door with number 225 on it.
“Is this where I’ll be staying the entire time?” I asked, stepping in.
He nodded.
“It isn’t a palace, but there’s plenty of room.”
The room—or rather what seemed to be a one bedroom apartment, since there was no bed in sight—was indeed spacious. A dining table, a refrigerator, a microwave, a desk with a flat monitor and even a decent size flat TV on the wall. Again, everything—except the monitor on the desk—reminded me of a clean and tidy though not luxurious, hotel. At the same time something about the room didn’t seem quite right. I couldn’t say precisely what it was though—I only had a vague nagging feeling that something was amiss.
Read Chapter 6 of EDEN CAN WAIT on or Jukepop Serials.
April 29, 2014
Chapter 5 of EDEN CAN WAIT has been posted
Chapter 5: You’d Better Know How to Say Your Goodbyes of EDEN CAN WAIT has been posted online.
They didn’t send a black helicopter for me. But they did send a black car.
Nissan Altima that stopped in front of me at 6pm on Sunday was sleek, moderately shiny and black like a crow. Thanks to its color and its tinted windows it looked every bit like a car a mysterious secretive organization would use to transport its employees. Which was strange, because I had always thought that real secretive organizations tried to blend in. Then again, maybe it was their way of blending in.
“Evening, Mr. West,” said a middle-aged man with an amazingly unmemorable face, who emerged from the driver’s door. “Are you ready?”
I nodded.
“Evening.”
“Let’s get your luggage into the trunk then,” he said, rounding the car.
There wasn’t much of a luggage—just a suitcase and a bag pack. My instructions had been very clear: “Pack the bare minimum. Everything else will be provided.” Following these guidelines hadn’t been hard, since I had never been too attached to my belongings, save for a few things with some sentimental value.
Once the suitcase and the bag pack had disappeared inside an empty pristine trunk, the driver courteously opened the back passenger door for me. I thanked him and dove in. The door closed softly behind me.
I looked around and immediately found two unpleasant surprises—so unpleasant, in fact that my first reaction was to get out of the car. The windows that looked tinted on the outside were completely opaque inside the car. And as if this wasn’t enough, a snow white blurred glass partition was separating the back seat from the front one. They could as well have offered a ride in a meat trailer.
Read Chapter 5 of EDEN CAN WAIT on or Jukepop Serials.
March 3, 2014
"People like saying life’s short a lot. The problem is, they don’t really mean it. It actually is..."
- Ray N. Kuili, Eden Can Wait (via larmoyante)
January 23, 2014
January 22, 2014
Chapter 4 of EDEN CAN WAIT has been posted
A plastic surgery?
I stopped reading and looked up. They must have been used to seeing the flabbergasted expression that line was putting on the candidates’ faces, and were expecting it.
"Please read everything," said the woman, almost gently.
I caught an attentive gaze of the man on the left and returned to reading, expecting to see some explanation and secretly hoping that the contract itself was some kind of a test.
I was wrong. Instead of clarifying things, the last page of the document was offering a brief heavily worded list of rules and prohibited acts. I was not to engage in any communications with the outside world. I was to follow all directives. I was to report any illness immediately. I was not to break out of my character under any circumstances …
I looked up again and met three pairs of peering eyes.
“Do you have any questions?” asked the bearded man.
I cleared my throat. Asking him which one of us was insane was certainly tempting, but hardly prudent.
“Well,” I said, after drawing blank for a moment. “Could you please tell me what this is all about?”
Read Chapter 4 of EDEN CAN WAIT on or Jukepop Serials.
December 5, 2013
November 18, 2013
Chapter 3 of EDEN CAN WAIT has been posted
I sat down. The chair was cold and hardly comfortable.
“Thank you for coming to this interview,” said the bearded man. “We have some questions we’d like to ask you and, undoubtedly, you have some questions you’d like to ask us. We’ll start with ours and then will get to yours.”
Long or not, the conversation was clearly not going to become very informative anytime soon. These people were not even introducing themselves. In person, ESI staff seemed to exude the same “whatever” attitude that was so evident in their written communications.
“Please tell us, Mr. West,” went on the man with a beard without waiting for my reaction. “When was the last time you were under severe stress and how exactly did you handle the situation?”
I ditched “how about now” response and thought about a high school fight that left me with a broken rib. However, the ghost of the questionnaire with its three pages of questions about violence suggested that it would be prudent to keep that story to myself. In particular, the people I was facing would not have liked the “how did you handle the situation?” part. So instead, I told them about one of my startup days when I had just a single night to deliver a long article full of half-verified facts and half-baked conclusions, so that we would be the first to cover what looked like a very promising story. It felt like a safer bet.
They seemed to listen to me very attentively, as if trying to grasp every sound. And they were staring. Staring as if they had never seen a talking human before.
Read Chapter 3 of on Wattpad.
The Moral Gene - Story Three of The Dawn
Morality can be a murky area even for humans, let alone for artificial intelligence. What happens when AI tries to understand the difference between right and wrong, good and evil? And what could its ...more
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