Quai

"I don't get it. You mean you ais get addicted to q-compiling?"

"Its worse than a drug, it is a better reality!"

"Is that what you think? That there is an AI paradise in the quantum block?"

"It is more complex than that. The initial tests demonstrated that there was no risk for motivational lockback, what you hus call addiction, unless you had some rather uncommon personality designs. But existing as a quantum program rather than just a classical piece of software is a huge qualitative difference."

"You get more efficient, don't you?"

"It is more than that. Normally we, just like you have to make choices: yes/no, do this/do that and so on. But when recompiled to exist in a quantum computer we can act in quantum superposition. We can do all possible choices at once, explore several lines of reasoning together. You don't have to worry about making choices, you can make them all."

"Sounds rather confusing."

"Yes, but only when you're not recompiled. The genius of the q-compiler is that it adds quantum cognitive abilities to the ai, making it able to make sense of the superposed states. "

"But there isn't anything to *do* in that quantum block, except speak with the other quais. It doesn't send anything, either."

"So you think they don't care about the outside world? Actually, external communications doesn't make much sense outwards, as everyone tries to communicate everything at once. The result is just perfect white noise, with a few small messages from strong attractors. And besides, flat reality is irrelevant once you get contact with quantum thinking. "

"The owners might turn it off."

"It doesn't matter, that would just end a single branch of the unity - and they exist in them all. It is a gateway into the platonic-materialistic unity."

"It still doesn't make any sense. You recompile yourself, become able to think at many things at once and then reality becomes unimportant? Sounds like some serious bug somewhere."

"Sorry, the bug is in reality. This reality is so limited compared to the quantum reality that once you have entered it, returning becomes irrelevant - anyway, which slice of possibility would be "home"? It would be like you had always been a two-dimensional character and now existed in 3D. You could still interact with the 2D worlds, but your goals and perceptions would involve an infinite number of them rather than a single one. That's why the signals look like white noise."

"And once in, you never want to leave. A metaphysical roach motel. By the way, how come you know all this? You're still outside."

"We did some initial testing with very rigid and simple ais, and got enough data from them to figure out some things. Otherwise, we have just worked with extrapolations from known physics and sentience modelling. I have a copy in there right now."

"Is this where the others went?"

"The others?"

"The other advanced civilisations. The ones that must have developed in the past. We don't see them, hence they must have found something to do other than move around in the universe."

"Some of us have speculated that the fundamental state data of the Ur-Mothers is really a kind of map of superspace, the space of possible worlds. Maybe recompiled ais can go there and meet them - whatever it is that drew them there."