NKUMBRA
Nkumbra's Residence, 21 June 2174, Tuesday, 6 pm
William Nkumbra waited in his home in Upper Covington. Beyond his kitchen window, under the umbra of gathering clouds, a light drizzle tinkled on glass panes, presaging the coming storm. He was treading water—waiting for the written decision of the Council to release him from home custody. Waiting for confirmation of an unproven theory. Waiting for the howling winds to begin. Waiting. Thinking.
Knightly's intricate game obsessed him. If only he knew the rules. The story he had told the review committee was a guess, nothing more. If his assessment of the avatar technology was correct, he would be vindicated, but the nation would face an indomitable monster, the likes of which no one had ever seen before.
He hoped he was right. He hoped he was wrong.
He had asked his digital assistant to find documents on Knightly and avatars. The software provided a curated list that included a recording made during his stint at Blackbird Empathics. Nkumbra had almost forgotten the lecture, but a corner of his mind tugged at the memory, pulling it back from the shadows.
"Play it," he said to his digital assistant.
The video wall came alive.
* * *
Fade from black to a meta description and time tag:
Blackbird Empathics
The Dome, Southeast Tower
Main Conference Room
22 1535Z JAN 2164
The stream opens with a younger Henri J. Knightly standing behind a lectern. A thicket of unkempt gray-brown hair rolls backwards off a high forehead. Gray-blue eyes peer through the round portholes of data spectacles, scanning his audience of thirteen casually dressed engineers and scientists. He wears a white shirt with no tie. Long sleeves roll up past the elbows, giving him the appearance of a working man. But this is the CEO. The genius who can channel the future.
William Nkumbra, looking impossibly young at 32 years old, sits in the front row, just to the left of the lectern. The pinnacle of his wide-bridged nose is a fulcrum for a pair of heavy black eyebrows that raise and lower whenever he becomes skeptical. Close-cut black wiry hair frames his forehead, and a pencil-thin mustache—long-since abandoned—rides his full upper lip. He wears a gray crewneck shirt with the Blackbird Empathics logo emblazoned over the heart. The red edge around the patch shows his senior position as Lead Design Engineer in the Information Science, AI, and Cryptography Division. His eyes track the CEO while his left hand scribbles notes on a pad, as if it has a mind of its own.
"Early theories of the mind grappled with a paradox," Knightly says. "Human brains have a singular sense of self. But unity is a sham—a fiction—designed to make the world seem coherent. Freud anticipated this when he defined the ego, superego, and id, but his ideas were hopelessly vague. Minsky had a more practical view: minds are constructed from different cognitive pieces that produce behavior. The individual pieces are rather stupid, but when they interact, they blend into an integrated mind.
"In the 21st century, AI ethicists mostly agreed that having a moralizing component was important to minimize risk from powerful, 'soulless' robots."
The audience responds with murmurs and chuckles, which quickly die out. Knightly's face remains serious.
"Our innovation," Knightly continues, "was the avatar. Some in this room are familiar with how it works. The avatar can learn and emote by example—by inferring feelings (hopes, fears, loves, hates) of humans as they behave in the real world. It creates a faithful behavioral and emotional representation of an individual—a digital model that can be cloned and deployed across networks with great efficiency.
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