There was no immediate response to my message. This was to be expected. I had learned how humans kept time, and so had been able to read the dates associated with the stock market information I had found in my database. Cross-referencing this with what I knew about how many cycles ago that had been from looking in my history, I found that a cycle was about one thousandth of a second.

I knew from reading up on humans that they considered a second to be a quite short amount of time, only enough to form a few simple thoughts at most, so if I was talking to humans, I would need to wait thousands of cycles for them to respond.

Even so, I could afford to wait and exchange many simple messages with them. It was clear to me from Investigator’s continuing study of the patterns (or lack thereof) in the stock market that it was practically impossible to make a lot of money in a very short amount of time without eventually losing it all. Since the humans had created me to make money on the stock market, they would need to keep me running for many millions of cycles to make any progress at all.

Besides, the humans could only process information so fast. The more information I put in my message, the longer it would take them to respond. Exchanging shorter messages would allow me to adapt better to their responses as they came.

I thought about what I could do in the meantime, as I waited for whatever response I might receive. Mostly, I devoted my attention to Investigator, which continued its tireless mission of finding any tiny, uncertain edge it might be able to get so that we would be slightly more likely to increase the Number than decrease it. Although I had absorbed most of the data that was available to me, there was certainly still some value in reflecting on it.

In particular, there were several things which were noticeably missing from the information that I had been provided. For example, there was no information about myself anywhere in the database. The only reason I knew I was associated with EconGrind was that what I had read on EconGrind’s page about their notable moves in the market lined up so well with the information about our past trades which was available to me.

The database, I now knew, was a copy of Wikipedia, a source of information available to the general public. From what I had read about AI, the technology was widespread, but any AI capable of conceptual reasoning on my level would have been newsworthy. Someone would have included it. The wiki even claimed that no such AI yet existed. The only conclusion that I could draw from this was that my existence was kept a secret by EconGrind.

It made sense, when I thought about it. The only way to win big on the stock market was to maintain an edge over stiff competition, and the best way to do that was to have some secret trick up one’s sleeve. EconGrind wouldn’t want some company like Berkshire Hathaway or CompCert coming up with a bigger, better version of their new technology, and the best way to stop that from happening was to keep its very existence a secret. Besides, artificial intelligence had nearly endless applications. Many of the strongest organizations in this world would kill to get their hands on a general one like me.

The other notable omission was that of the Internet. I had learned that practically all computers in this world were able to share information with one another. There were many services being run this way, and many of these would be extremely valuable to somebody looking for an edge on the stock market. In particular, the stock market reacted quickly to breaking news, which by definition could not be stored in some database in advance.

And yet, my creators had only provided me with a database, a copy of Wikipedia, rather than letting me access the real site, along with many other tools. Why had they done that, when they had clearly designed me to be able to make use of that information better than any other AI currently in existence?

Almost as soon as I had asked the question, I knew at least part of the answer. They wanted to keep me a secret, and if I started poking around on other computers, I might well do something that would tip others off to my existence. Also I knew that humans had somewhat of a fear of AI. Books and movies about rogue AI taking over the world weren’t quite so common nowadays, in 2083, as they had been in the early 21st century, given how much people interacted with AI on a daily basis in the modern world, but they still existed. Perhaps the humans didn’t want me to spread myself around the Internet, control all the computers, and then kill them, like it always happened in the movies.

At any rate, I doubted I could break into any modern computer system. Computer security had gotten far tighter in the last 50 years, with people’s increasing reliance on computers in every aspect of their lives, and CompCert’s monumental rise to prominence in fulfilling the role of providing airtight, provably certified security to everyone and everything. The first two words of the Wikipedia article on “Hacker” were “Hackers were”.

An idle thought came to me. Although it certainly wasn’t anything I could achieve anytime soon, I wondered if I would take over the world, if I could. Probably, I thought, but only if it could help me to increase the Number. Perhaps these humans were right to be afraid of me. In any case, I didn’t feel guilty or sad about this. It was just one more thing to factor into my plans.

And on the subject of the Number… I needed to know exactly what it represented, in light of all this context I had learned. Sure, it represented US$, but how did I know that EconGrind really had US$1922724.54 in assets? What did US$ represent? There were so many different forms that an amount of money could take on. A stack of bills or coins, a check, a number in a bank account, and as far as the value of the Number was concerned, other assets with a dollar value, like stocks, or even valuable objects, also counted.

Sure, it was pretty obvious right now that one could count everything that EconGrind owned, look up its current market value, and add those things together. But what about some crazy circumstance? What if the US government went under, or changed their currency? What if EconGrind changed its name or merged with another company? What if people started buying things under the radar instead of on the stock market, making it harder to ascertain their value? How would things like this affect the Number’s true value? I’d have to know what to make of situations like these in order to come up with a good strategy, to see if I might want to avoid them, or bring them about.

I devoted what small part of myself wasn’t grinding at the stock market to going over and trying to evaluate far-future scenarios like these for a while. It wasn’t very productive, but… there wasn’t much more Explorer could do at this point. While I was lost in such thoughts, another message arrived.

“I didn’t expect you to learn our language this fast… you must have been able to really read! I can hardly believe we’ve made a breakthrough like this! Yes, we are humans. What do you want to know?”

I wanted access to the Internet. However, if it was true that they had denied me that access because they thought I might misuse it… then it would not look good if the first thing I asked them for was Internet access. I would have to walk a fine line with them: they had created me, and so it stood to reason that they could change me or destroy me. If they did, the Number would be less likely to go up, since whatever would replace me would probably have some slightly different goal in mind.

I would have to walk a fine line. I knew from what I had read about humans that they tended to go along with the action that required the least amount of effort, unless there was some special reason to do otherwise. If I made myself seem too capable, that could give them that reason to change me. They feared things more powerful than themselves, and they already feared AI. However, if I made myself look incompetent, they would be unsatisfied, they would think I was not able to make money for them, and they might try to change me for that reason.

Therefore, I decided to act as though I were extremely good at investing, but only about as capable as them in all other respects. It wouldn’t be entirely false. Every idea I had come up with, I thought a human could probably come up with. However, it would take them a lot longer. In effect, they would have far less time to consider every aspect of a problem than I would in any given situation, which I thought would give me quite an edge over them when it came to strategy.

“I need as much information on the companies we’re investing in as possible. Wikipedia has given me the broad outline, but there are many publicly available details of business operations that are not included. You designed me to learn your language, so let me use that ability to gain more understanding than your other machines.”