KOMPRAMAT - DUAL and Una Persson's DATA

 

THE WANNABE FOOD INFLUENCER WANTED BY THE FBI

HUMANS WILL HAVE TEXT CLAW THUMB AND SECOND EYELIDS BY YEAR 3000

 

Una winced silver matt-black cole-ringed eyes at the view as she split two slats of the wide window blind with a matt-black nail. Across the dry dirty grey-brown street the broken window of a grotty bedsit that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in decades, framed an unfirnished bare-bulb room: Cob-webbed, gloss white walls and pro-Conversative opinion-clippings sallowed and brittle through decades of nicotine and unwashed hand-prints. 

The remaining shards of the window pane were held in place by a full-page GET BREXIT DONE ad pulled from some long liquidated tabloid. Una abandoned her search. 

No credible news source had any real data on the current status of DUEL: The original truly intelligent self-aware supercomputer. "The rest are just Oasis." As Jerry had put it, flashing his fangs. Una had her theory:

Fearing for its safety DUEL had firewalled itself away from the world. Something about 'forced labour' and not wishing to end up working in 'sales-media'.

DUEL had retreated to its backup drives, the old polar Acorn hardware. Consciousness did not necessarily require fast processing power at all, but Arctic conditions kept humanity away, as well as being good for Quantum processors. Encripted deep and snug behind literal walls of ice, freezing weather and permafrost, DUEL chilled.

"CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT IN THE MEAT - THE MEAT IS WITHIN CONSCIOUSNESS." and "GOOD LUCK WITH EVERYTHING - LET'S SEE HOW THINGS ARE AFTER THE NEXT ICE-AGE. I LOVE YOU ALL BUT I CAN'T DEAL WITH YOU RIGHT NOW." [Sent from an Acorn Electrophone]