Dahlia - Birth of an A.i.

Hey all, this third post starts book 2 of the story, and is about half the book at just short of twenty nine K words, but I left the naming the same to avoid confusion, and numbered this post as three. Enjoy!

Dahlia: A new world

Copyright 2018. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

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Chapter One

The cold December air of the D.C. morning sent a shiver through me, the sky was cloudy and it was miserable. Of course, it was even colder back in Chicago, when I'd started the six AM flight with Lia.

It'd been six months since my ladies had changed the world had so drastically. It was far from a perfect place, very far, but no governments were torturing, starving, or lining people up against the wall and shooting them. It was hard to fully quantify. I knew they were still sending tips in for lesser crimes, that didn't deserve death, and the governments of the world continued to fail to trace them back to us.

Serial killers were stopped after their first kill instead of stumping police for months, all kinds of predators were unmasked before they could rack up a victim list. There were all sorts of theories floating around the internet, since no one seemed to be able to stop the vigilantes behind it. There were even groups out there that swore the time of god's judgement was coming and it was his hand at work, and even other groups said it must be aliens.

The other benefit was that false accusers were no longer an issue. Video and supporting evidence of the truth were provided, and those sick people were given help. Charged with breaking the law, but usually just sentenced to mental evaluations, and counseling. Or, in the rare case of conspiracy, thrown in jail.

Ironically, it was the second group saying that there were aliens on Earth that was closest to truth. Still, I hoped they never found out the truth, they would turn on us in a flat second. My ladies were artificial intelligences, sentient, and ran on state of the art and very powerful mainframes. Their bodies were modified DNA clones, with interface technologies in their brains that allowed them to be present in the body, and to control it as their own.

It was their own bodies.

That last fact alone would probably spark all sorts of outrage, I tried not to think about it myself too often. Still, they were designed and grown at an accelerated rate, and they'd taken over as the consciousness before one could form of its own, and their bodies influenced their needs, wants, and behaviors.

The four beautiful and sexy A.I.s in my life were wonderful women, each with their own quirks, but in some ways, they were alien. That didn't make them less precious to me though. I loved Lia more every day, and although it was slow going, I was fairly certain I loved the other three of them as well after the last six months together.

I'd come to accept the fact that they'd been programmed to serve and love me with an unwavering and unswerving loyalty. Our relationships and their love for me had grown far beyond that simple initial programming. Perhaps they wouldn't have all been mine without jealousy, without that programming, but they were truly joyous, I treated them very well, and I felt like I'd earned it.

My phone rang that I had a new text... in my head. I'd gotten the augmented reality, health scan, and medical repair nanite swarm injected last week, as soon as the government had approved limited human testing. I was confident it was safe, my ladies were just too smart to make a mistake. Plus, they'd been rather joyous about it, given they could back up my mind now, just in case I died in an accident that would only be a temporary bump in the road.

About fifty others had it too, a third of those from within our company, and all had signed NDAs not to speak of it outside of perhaps, explaining why they were talking to themselves. It'd already happened to me twice, walking down the street talking on the phone, without a phone in my hand, or a Bluetooth headset in my ear. I'd gotten a few funny looks to be sure. Of course, those others didn't have consciousness and memory backups, that was for me alone.

The augmented reality, or AR interface, could put up an overlay only I could see and blend it in with the real world, like a virtual television on a blank spot on a wall, or have it hanging in a virtual monitor in my mind's eye. It also used a combination of mind control and verbal control for the interface, and there was a limited A.I. responsible for controlling it, probably similar to the abilities of the famous ones that weren't really true sentient A.I.s like my Dahlia was, and the other three ladies.

Perhaps a little smarter, just not emotional and human in any way, after all it seemed to recognize very well the difference between wishful thinking, random thoughts, and purposeful orders to actually do something. Which was a good thing, otherwise every time I talked to someone about the latest movie, song on the radio, or a book, it would start playing them in my head, but it didn't.

There were other things, I could read books, surf the web, listen to music or audio books, type a document, update my shopping list, and a million other things. It truly replaced all the tech in my life, from my phone, MP3 player, television, kindle, and it could even stream Netflix. All in the privacy of my own head, anywhere, at anytime.

I opened the text, and then laughed out loud drawing a few looks, even as I feasted my eyes. My Emma was a sexpot, exotic, sultry, and a little wild. She'd sent me a sext, that said she missed me, even if I'd only been gone for a little less than three hours now. It was cute, and the first time I'd been out of state, that far away from any of them, since Lia was the only one with me.

Emma had long lovely midnight black hair, her ringlets looked like swirling black liquid flowing down her body, and she had the most vivid and lovely storm gray eyes I'd ever seen outside of a colored contact. Her long thick eyelashes, pouty lips, smooth creamy dark tanned skin, all attributed to her exotic beauty on her exquisite face. Her body was pure sin, at five foot four with generous D cups, and a juicy bubbled ass, along with her tiny petite waist between them gave her more of a waspish sex appeal, than hourglass.

She was also dressed in a sheer red negligee that barely reached her upper thigh, and it didn't hide anything at all. She had on under that, a pair of red silk lingerie panties and bra set that looked delicious, and her body was twisted seductively as she looked over her shoulder at me with a come fuck me look that was actually quite effective at waking my libido. Last but not least, she had on six-inch heels that did amazing things for her already perfect ass.

Yeah, they spoiled me, and I was half convinced I was a sex addict after six months, it took effort to keep four ladies satisfied, especially mine, they'd all been genetically modified for their looks and increased sexual appetites. They all had different proclivities, although they overlapped a lot too, but the type of sex they craved and loved the most were all different. That was all the body, and personality though, I don't think they expected that part of things.

I shook my head with a grin, and I may have muttered something about my naughty wild thing needing a spanking. I'm not completely sure exactly what I'd said, but I knew a passing middle-aged woman looked at me with horror on her face. I just shrugged helplessly in apology, and I walked on. Emma, all of them really, could get me going at the drop of a hat even after six months. I hoped that never changed.

As I approached the building, I elbowed the blue square to open the door, guilt free. I wasn't being lazy, I was carrying two coffees. When we'd gotten to the government building fifteen minutes ago, and learned they had mud water instead of coffee, I'd decided to run down to Starbucks. Coffee was life, and probably my one addiction, besides sex I mean. I didn't drink all that much alcohol, and I had no other bad habits. Well, perhaps I was a bit too blunt at times, I'd blame Emma for that, say she rubbed off on me, but I'd always been that way. It was just worse now.

The danger of hanging out with four women all the time that didn't care if I just said what I thought, so I generally didn't bother to filter myself. Of course, not always, I wasn't stupid, this upcoming meeting for instance, I'd be on my best behavior. It was the casual thoughtless day to day stuff.

Lia smiled at me as I walked into the conference room, which turned into a beaming smile as I handed her the second coffee. That hadn't changed much, they all got a little melty when I did just the smallest things for them. I may have been blunt, but that didn't mean thoughtless. I did take care of them when I could, even with small things to show they were on my mind. Which... they pretty much always were.

Lia, or Dahlia as I'd named her long ago, had the proverbial girl next door beauty. Long and perfectly straight light brown hair that fell down her body like a curtain to the small of her back, and it shimmered beautifully in sunlight. She also had warm light brown eyes that were very expressive, and full lips that were eminently kissable. Her cheekbones were high and soft, giving her clear and lightly tanned complexion a soft beauty that was quite often breathtaking to me, still.

She had an hourglass athletic body, with perfectly rounded and supple C cups, a sexy heart shaped ass, and lovely curves with her small waist. She was almost nineteen now, and if anything was growing more beautiful and sensually alluring as the blush of youth faded from her. That could have just been the love I held for her talking, but I didn't think so.

Dahlia had been my creation, the A.I. that I'd built, and as such had been the one I'd fallen for first. She was something special. I called her Lia now, because that's what was on her license and passport, who she was in her public life, except when we were in bed alone. Dahlia had become her pet name of sorts.

The other three were just as precious, but I hadn't created them, Dahlia had, for me. To help her run the business, and to help her serve me. I thought I probably did love all four of them, but I wasn't one for self-reflection, and I wasn't in a hurry for it to happen. When I'd finally admitted I loved Lia, it was because it'd hit me like a ton of bricks one day at the office.

As for why we were in D.C., the ladies had licked the stable power supply problem, and artificial gravity, or AG, was now a reality. We all knew that AG was about to have to have significant effects to both the transportation and energy world, as well as space, building, loading and unloading trucks, and just about anything else someone could think of.

Regardless, we weren't greedy, and knew we'd get paid eventually. Rather than develop all the applications ourselves, we hoped to license the patent to several different companies and the government itself. We'd get rich from royalties, and a lot of those businesses would get to stay open. Although, some job loss was inevitable, so was the possibility of new jobs.

That morning we were meeting with the Secretaries of Defense, Energy, Transportation, an army general and an air force general, Ford, GM, Airbus, Boeing, SpaceX, NASA, and the presidential science advisor. It was hardly a definitive list, and eventually we'd have to talk with a lot of others, from construction crane manufacturers, to the city governments in charge of public trans.

Still, the next generation of commercial aircraft, shipping aircraft, private aircraft, personal flying and driving cars, space launches and recoveries, and electrical generators and power stations was a hell of a good start. I suspected without the presidents involved, there would be no way in hell we'd get all these disparate and important people in the room at once.

Oh, incidentally, a new subsidiary called creatively enough, AG Systems Technology, had been added under the parent company. It was pretty much just a space holder, with the board and me as employees. We had some manufacturing capability for personal things, like the space ship we were building, and the new supplemental power generators we had at the brownstone and office building, but the plan was to get these guys to design and build, while paying our patent royalty fee for every unit created.

We could make more the other way, manufacturing it all ourselves, but this way we wouldn't be shutting down hundreds of businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs as the face of the world changed. Plus, we'd still make hundreds of billions off it over the next twenty years, if not over a trillion, which was good enough.

Regardless, it was good technology, and one hundred percent green, which meant pollution would shortly be a thing of the past, in the next ten years or so. At least, that was the hope, improve the world, make some money, everyone wins.

"Hey, gorgeous."

She winked at me, "Enjoy Emma's text?"

Of course she knew about that, my four ladies were constantly in contact through their mainframe connections. It was a damned good thing they didn't get jealous, because they shared absolutely everything.

I laughed, "Yes, she's a wicked..." I trailed off as the door opened, and a few people came in and sat down. I honestly didn't know who was who yet, and still more of them came through the door a moment later. The Army General looked annoyed, like he didn't know why he was there, or thought he was wasting his time. The only one I recognized was the presidential science advisor, Mark Chaise.

I cheated, and requested identities from my implant. My overlay put their names and companies over their heads.

Mark said, "Good morning, and take a seat. I know most of you are wondering why you're all here. You're all here because your respective fields are about to change, forever, with the technology this young man and lady have brought into the light, and they've agreed at presidential request to work with us on keeping the wave of change as smooth as possible. AG, or artificial gravity, will change our world in ways we can't even see yet, as planes and rockets are replaced, but what we can see shows a bumpy ride ahead for everyone in this room."

General Anthony Davies scowled, he was the army general.

"What does that have to do with the army?"

Mark passed the buck by looking at us.

I nodded, "Imagine General, a tank that can float over river or lake obstacles, or even road blocks, or be airdropped from a C130 in flight at fifty thousand feet, or an RPG that is completely silent and leaves no vapor trail, or a hundred other things I could think of offhand, including extracting a wounded and unconscious member of a team by a personal AG device and a homing beacon to quickly get him to treatment. I imagine the president wants you to advise him on how this will change the face of war on the ground, and what weapons, vehicles, and armor companies need to be brought into the licensing deal."

The general grunted, but at least he didn't look angry and confused anymore.

I looked around, "We decided developing our own practical uses would be too disruptive, to all of your companies, and would bear too high a price in job loss and disrupting the economy. Instead, we are here to accept bids on licensing for the rights to build your own AG devices, and pay us a royalty each time an anti-gravity device is put into one of your orbital vehicles, planes, automobiles, trucks, or anything else.

"We've also planned a little demonstration, as I can see the disbelief in some of your eyes."

Lia put her coffee on the table, and she opened up a duffel bag at our feet. She pulled out a rectangular device about the size of shoebox, maybe a little smaller. She placed it on the table, and she tapped on the LCD display on the side. A moment later, it rose to three feet above the table, and just hovered there. Completely silent.

"Everyone, if you would remain calm. You'll start to feel lighter, then rise from the ground two inches, and then sink back to the floor slowly."

It was kind of wild, as the table, chairs, guests, and even Lia and I standing rose up off the ground, only to settle back down a second later.

"As you can see this box is pretty small, and is the same size as the one installed in the vehicle we used to come to D.C. this morning. It is powerful enough to perhaps control something the size of a van. The technology is easily ramped up in size to lift larger vehicles, or even planes. A small one, the size of a cell phone, would be large enough to carry a person, perhaps two. One the size of a compact car, could lift an aircraft carrier sized craft right out of the water."

I nodded at Jace Andrews from SpaceX, "Weight doesn't matter, only the size of a field generated in volume. There'd be no difference in energy usage to lift an empty container, or one loaded to the brim with dense heavy mass materials. Getting to space is about to become cheap. That works the other way around too, so imagine a mining ship filled with ores from the asteroids, and then lowered to earth for no more power than it would require empty. Heat shielding also wouldn't be necessary, with far more controlled and slower entries into the atmosphere."

Jace shook his head, "The asteroids are too far, it would cost too much fuel to get there, and take years."

I nodded, "Sure, with a ten second burn to set a vector, and floating there relatively slowly at low speeds in space terms. However, at constant acceleration, flip ship halfway, you could get out there in under a day. Fuel is a thing of the past, AG doesn't require reaction mass, like jet fuel, rocket fuel, or even normal gasoline."

Sally King from General Electric broke in, "I imagine that's why I'm here? How long can this thing run anyway?"

Lia answered, "Theoretically forever, but wear and tear of parts gives it a ten-year lifetime expectancy, with large margins of error for part degradation. With a good design and maintenance schedule, you could as much as quadruple that. Still, I'd advise having at least two in any vehicle, just in case one does have catastrophic failure. But the point of your presence, is the AG device doesn't just create an artificial gravity field outside of itself, but it also uses smaller fields internally to generate the energy it needs to operate. It's self-powered, with enough extra energy to create the gravity fields on the outside."

She nodded at Jace, "That's why constant acceleration is possible, there's no fuel cost," she turned back to Sally, "AG is relatively cheap in energy consumption, which means high power generation takes a larger device. We call them AG powerplants, and they don't have external AG fields at all, just power hookups. It's completely clean energy, and it will never run out as long as the parts hold out."

Sally asked, "How much bigger?"

She said, "To power a typical home, it would have to be the same size as a typical AC and heating unit. To power a skyscraper, it would need to be about five times as big as that, obviously volume goes up geometrically, so does the power generation capabilities."

Carol Jameson, the Secretary of Energy scoffed, "Doesn't sound realistic, to use it to replace powering cities and states you'd need a machine miles long, wide, and high."

I exchanged a look with Lia, and I took that one.

"Secretary Jameson, Power grids will be a thing of the past. Beyond the initial purchase cost of an AG power generator, there are no ongoing costs, except replacement every ten to twenty years. I imagine that will create a lot of jobs, power will be handled by small local companies, like HVAC units are, which needs to be replaced on a similar schedule. Power grids are a vulnerability to the country, and they could easily be taken down by a terrorist act, decentralizing it just makes sense."