Spheria by Cody Leet

That invention enables almost all wireless communications we have today. As Americans say, ‘not too shabby.’”
    “Touché,” said Max, and bowed his head. “I didn’t say it was my theory, but I heard that somewhere. Maybe there is a half-truth to it. Back to me. After I graduated, I got a job at this game company in Cambridge where I was working on coding artificial intelligence. While there, I got my citizenship, and conceived of some of the concepts that later became the Qube technology. I made some key observations while dealing with the deficiencies in how we did AI. What we did was make ‘pseudo algorithms,’ they just faked behaviors that one might think were intelligent by using state models and expression trees. I remember a magazine article about one of our games that lauded our AI because the enemy would hide behind barriers. But the code just told them to sidestep when they were getting shot at. And that happened to move them behind a barrier, so it was all just a misinterpretation of simple rules. Anyway, when the game company went out of business, I went back to grad school. I focused on inventing the Qube in the cold halls of the MIT Stata Center, and the rest is history. Next.”
    “You didn’t tell us anything non-work related,” said Dana.
    “Oh yeah. Well, my entire life is kind of work-related. But I like to read, both fiction and non-fiction. I have a huge book collection at home. Although everything I get now is digital, so it’s not growing, at least not physically. Other than that, work and video games.”
    Dana went next. “Hi Min, my name is Dana Carter. As Max mentioned, there were two of us at the beginning; I’m the other one. I used to run the American office of Aboriginal Accruals for Graham Neilson. He contributed most of the funding for this project. This project is so important to him that he wanted me to be engaged in its management. He wants me to make sure the core values are never compromised and that the data we get is pure and unbiased. So in other words, I manage the boring administrative part of the project. But I do also get to manage the semi-cool scientific side of it. The researchers here report to me. Max handles the technical staff – those building the hardware, software, and world elements. It’s a good structure and works well.”
    Watching her speak, Min estimated she was in her early sixties. She was stocky and had short curly blond hair. The hairstyle probably made her look older than she was.
    “I used to be in the U.S. Navy, so I’m very organized and like things structured. But after living in nine different places over eight years, I decided to give civilian life a chance and apply the logistics skills I had acquired. I took some time off to travel the world and happened to meet Graham on a scuba diving expedition. At the time, he was looking for someone who had the ability to navigate the U.S. grants system for him, and we hit it off. I helped set up an office here for his firm and, fast forward a few years, here I am. So yes, as I mentioned, I’m an avid scuba diver, and have had more than a few close encounters with sharks.”
    “Hopefully not loan sharks?” asked an Asian man, who’d until now remained silent.
    “No, I managed to avoid those so far.” Dana looked at the person to her left, who was the Indian man.
    “Hi, Min. My name is Ravi Rashtrakuta Reddy, but people just call me ‘Rash.’ I work as a sociologist here. My job is to study the society of the Polyans. How it developed and organized, and how it’s evolving over time. When I was a child, my father ran a mental health facility, and I used to go there after school to do homework. Observing how people interacted there, admittedly not in a normal sense, fascinated me. It formulated my career interest. After grad school, I stayed on as an assistant professor. But when the program started performing research on lab monkeys, I decided to quit. I was friends with Max from