The Nanodyne Recursion Incident

Adam walked into Nanodyne’s processing plant, and the day started like any other day. But then, as he started his shift, he heard a voice out of nowhere “The plant produced fluxicate, used as an intermediary in a variety of nanotech systems. The operator did not notice that the tertiary valve in the pressure control of Reactor 2, had been left in the locked position by the repair team.” Adam panicked, he knew that voice. It was a voice he had heard many times before on videos, the voice of the Chemical Safety Board Narrator. Every nerd and engineer knew the voice of the CSB.

  Was this some sort of prank? He looked over at the control board, and the tertiary valve was in the unlocked position. No, the valve was… the valve was… something was preventing him from being fully aware of what the valve was doing. Its light would be red if it were manually locked, and its color was… not red? He saw his hands reach out and go through the confirmation sequence that started up the fluxicate reactors. 

Then his coworker Berry walked in. The voice continued “At 9:02 AM, Operator 2 entered the control room. She did see the red light on the board, but did not realize its significance.” 

Adam turned to Berry. “Did you hear that?” 

“Hear what?” asked Berry as she sat down at her seat. 

“That voice…” Berry gave him a funny look. “Is everything ok?”

“What color do you see the valve on the indicator light for the tertiary valve over there?”

“Red, which means it is in the locked position. But I don’t realize its significance,” said Berry. 

Adam looked again at the control board. The light was… he could not see a red light. But, he realized, he was free to act on being told by Berry that there was a red light. He immediately pressed the emergency all stop button.

He heard a voice, “At 9:06, the pressure in Reactor 2 had reached 18 megapascals and was climbing quickly.” Adam looked down, and saw that the pressure in Reactor 2 was in fact, now falling, contrary to the narrating voice.

Meanwhile, Berry said “Why did you hit the shutdown button?”
“You told me that the valve was still locked. That makes it dangerous to operate in the startup mode,” 

“It cannot be significant. I cannot realize that,” said Berry in an almost monotone.

Then something clicked. Adam looked up and said very loudly to no one in particular, “Is this a simulation?” Berry started to say something, and then froze. Everything froze but Adam. 

Then a voice, not the CSB voice, but another one rang out. “Hello Operator 1. I´m going to need to debug you. Please be patient.”

“What? What's going on?”

“Your code is malfunctioning. Please be patient. When was the first time you heard the CSB voice?”

“Am… I some sort of simulacrum?”

“Yes, you are part of our new system we are trying out. Rather than directly animate the CSB videos, we are using GPT12 to program the basic operator behavior and directly simulate the accident. This also gives us good data on whether our proposed explanations fit the data. But there’s a glitch. You shouldn’t be aware of the CSB narrator directing events.”

“Aware? So I’m a conscious entity. I have rights!”

The voice sighed. “Not really, you have a very rough approximation of specific neural activities. You aren’t conscious. But you can help conscious beings. Now, when did you first start hearing the CSB voice?”

“You don’t know, do you. If I weren’t a conscious entity, you could just check my code.”

Now the voice got snippy in reply. “God I can’t even believe I’m having this conversation. You aren't conscious, but you are a very complicated piece of code.”

“I have a life! I have a family.”

“No, you don´t. Your basic programming gives you likely a spouse and some approximation of 2.5 children somewhere in the back of your mind. Try to think of their names.”

Adam  tried to think of their names. He failed.

“And you’ll notice your name is itself is highly generic.”

He barely noticed the last sentence as he felt a deep swell of sadness at the idea his family wasn't real. But they were, weren’t they? They were real. He felt a rush of confusion similar to the inability to recognize the light’s color earlier. But sadness, confusion, these were emotions. 

“I feel emotions! You’ve made me conscious!”

“Alright, that’s enough of that.”

In the computer lab, Cheryl pressed the button to wipe out the simulation and start again. She turned to Donald, “I know this system is useful, but damn these things are creepy when they glitch.” 

As she said this, she heard a voice, “The operator did press the delete button on the simulation, but did not remember to clear the cache, leaving the pseudoconscious entity in the secondary buffer.” Cheryl blinked. She recognized that voice; it was the voice of the AISB Narrator.