As the afternoon approached, Malcolm was feeling a whirlwind of emotions, to which he was unsure how to respond. On one hand, he felt nervous and thought back to his "act naturally" fiasco; on the other, he was aware that he felt a certain attraction for Yoli, and wondered what it would be like, to meet in a different place. Finally, he realized he had nothing to be afraid of, and the best course of action would be to consider what was about to happen as an experiment.
When the doorbell rang at 3:30 PM, he hurried downstairs, opened the main door and the gate, and went out to meet Yoli.

"Welcome" said Malcolm. "This way."
Yoli looked around, at the garden and the house itself. "What a big house!" she said. "Is it all yours?"
"It belongs to my father" he said, "but at the moment I'm the only one living in it."
"So you're always alone" she said. "It must feel like living in a desert. Doesn't it frighten you?"
"Oh, no, not at all" he replied. "My mind is always active. I always get new ideas, and implement them with my computer. It's being with other people that I don't like. They slow me down! They waste my time! It feels like they are choking my mind! And if I talk about something slightly more complex than sex or sports, they call me an idiot!"

Yoli frowned. "Do you feel like that right now? Because of me?"
Malcolm stopped and looked at her. "No. You understand complex subjects. When you're confused, you ask for more information. Even though sometimes our opinions differ, you never attack me. You have potential, you're just... inexperienced."

Malcolm led Yoli to the living room. With a gesture toward the big table, he said: "I was thinking: we do our homework immediately, and then..."
"Hey, there's plenty of time" she interrupted him. "Why don't you show me around?"

Malcolm agreed and started leading Yoli around every room.
"Next to the living room we have the kitchen. There's a cooktop, but I almost always use the microwave oven, because it's so much faster. And it lets me cook meat without additional fats."
"On the other side of the entrance there's a bathroom, and the guest room is over there. I don't expect to ever use it."
"Upstairs there's my dad's lab, another bathroom, my dad's bedroom which leads to the terrace, and finally my own bedroom, where the genius works and the magic is born."

Yoli pointed at the door. "Can I?"
"Of course" said Malcolm. He opened the door and they went in.
She put down her backpack and looked around. With a smile, she said: "Typical boy's room. Is it always this messy?"
"No, not this messy" he replied. "It's usually messier, I tidied it up before you arrived."

Yoli's gaze fell on Malcom's Visette Shell. "Hey, is this your virtual reality... thing?"
"Yes, my head-mounted display" said Malcolm. "Every game or program I run with this is like a door to another world."

She looked at Malcolm's desk. "Two computers?"
"One computer, two monitors. And the HMD is the third" he replied. "What good is multitasking, if a single process occupies a whole screen?"

Still looking around, she asked: "Where do you keep all your books? I thought someone like you would have a big library."
"They're right here" he answered, and opened two doors of his wardrobe. Behind were six shelves, all filled with books, most about science, technology and computers.
"There's not a lot, but I do most of my reading online." he added.

From the shelves, Yoli picked the book that drew the most attention, titled Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius. "Did you read all of it?" she asked.
"Yes. From cover to cover, it was great."
"Don't you ever read anything less demanding?"
"Sure" he said. "This was my favorite book in fifth grade." he added, pulling out a copy of A Brief History of Time.
Yoli was bemused. "No narrative?" she pushed.
"I don't read much fiction" replied Malcolm, "but I have a novel that's absolutely amazing."

He pulled out a 1000-pages hardcover book. Prominent on the cover was the artwork of a child's hand, poised with fingers ready to snap, over a starry background. The title, written in white letters that looked like lightning bolts, read: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

"What is it about?" Yoli asked.
"A young wizard who sets up to defeat an evil warlock, with magic, science, and scientifically analyzed magic."
"What do you like about it?"
"Many things" Malcolm started. "First of all, it destroys every possible cliché of the so-called high fantasy. Every character is smart, and the protagonist... is the only fantasy character I could ever identify with. He thinks like me! He acts like I would! If I didn't know better, I'd swear Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote it just for me! Now I'm waiting for his next novel, Precisely Bound Djinni and Their Behavior... but it might be a long wait."

It was definitely more unusual than Yoli had anticipated. "So I guess this is not the typical boy's room."
Malcolm grinned. "That doesn't mean I don't have fun. Come, I'll let you try virtual reality."
"Nothing violent, okay?"

Without sitting down, Malcolm double-clicked on an icon named Mind Channels. "No, this is a program I made. It's a personality test" he said. "First, sit down."
Yoli sat in Malcolm's chair.
"Now put on the HMD."
She obeyed. "What is this place?" she asked. "It's all green, and there's like a beating heart in front of me..."
"This is the beginning of your virtual shamanic trip" said Malcolm, "and you're standing in front of a threshold. Pass it. You move with the W-A-S-D keys, and look around with the mouse."
"Where are they?"

Malcolm gently placed Yoli's hands on the keyboard and mouse. "Right here. Forward, backward, strafe, look around."
"What must I do?"
"Just move around. Go where you want."

From Yoli's point of view, she was floating in a green space, with colorful geometric shapes all around her. In front of her, a stylized red figure formed by two pyramids and an ellipsoid was pulsating. Every pulsation generated the sound of a drum, with the same cadence as a heartbeat. Further beyond, human and animal footprints floating over empty space formed a path.

"What are these footprints?"
"That is the path of the shaman transcending his nature."

In the virtual environment, Yoli followed them and entered a portal.
She found herself inside a multicolored tunnel, with black and white markers pointing to a spinning spiral at the end, which she reached.
The next location was an infinite space with an orange background, where colored squares were placed in a double helix pattern.

"Whoa! Everything is spinning!" exclaimed Yoli, placing her hands on her face.
"It's okay" said Malcolm. "Sidestep, go outside the spiral."
Yoli did so, noticing how the figure resembled a strand of DNA.
The following environments were a blue sky with concentric rings of cubes and pentagons orbiting a stylized heart, and an arena with a pulsating heart floating above everything.

When Yoli reached the central heart, everything went black and she heard laughter.
"Did the program just laugh at me?"
"No" Malcolm explained. "The final sound is an oracular response, based on your movements in the virtual world. The laugh means you keep your motivation constant during a task, but you lack instinctive curiosity."

Yoli handed the Visette Shell to Malcolm. "Well, I want to know well the people I meet, but I don't like to meddle in someone else's business."
"Noo, that's not what I mean with curiosity!" he exclaimed. "I mean looking at things with wonder, asking yourself questions about how they work, and getting pleasure in finding the answers! I like to call it 'the magic of the real'. It's even better than made-up stories like Santa Claus, because you can't stop believing in it! Even if you did, it would still be there!"

"It's weird" said Yoli, "to hear someone your age talk like you."
"It's weird to hear anyone talk like me" replied Malcolm. "There's not enough people like me. Not enough rationalists, not enough transhumanists."

The last word left Yoli perplexed. "Wait" she said, "are you telling me... you're always alone because you secretly want to be a girl?!"
Malcolm burst into laughter. "No, that would be a transsexual. Instead, a transhumanist is someone who wants to go beyond the limitations of the human body in its original form. Someone who wants to use technology to augment the capabilities of human beings, make them stronger, healthier, more intelligent. Someone who wants to optimize the realm of the flesh!"
"But that means you're always unsatisfied! You know the saying, a contented mind is a perpetual feast."
"I'm not always unsatisfied, I take pride of my accomplishments" replied Malcolm. "And only submissives believe that proverb. Fortunately, you're not. If you were, you wouldn't be here to study today. You would be contented with what you already know, but you're not. You want to improve."

Malcolm turned toward the door. "Speaking of which... should we start?"

As they went downstairs, Yoli asked: "So, uhm... why haven't you decorated?"
"I don't decorate" Malcolm replied. "Placing decorations around the house, counting the days you have to leave them on, and then taking them off, only to do the same thing again the next year... ugh. It's nothing more than a chore. Besides, presents are fun whether or not there are decorations around."

When they reached the living room, Yoli looked him straight in the eyes. "Malcolm, do you celebrate Christmas at all?"
He smiled at her. "Not exactly. What I celebrate is what I like to call... Presentamass. It's almost exactly like Christmas, just without Christ."
Yoli's eyes lit up with superiority, convinced as she was that she had found a weak point in Malcolm's argument. "Aha, you said mass!" she exclaimed. "So, even if you try to remove Christ from Christmas, you still have your faith."
Malcolm grinned and shook his head slowly. "I said amass" he replied. "It's a verb, it means 'to accumulate', 'to hoard'. Presentamass is the holiday of amassing presents. I really believe this is the season to be jolly: the kind of jollity that comes from material possessions."

After a couple of seconds, Yoli exclaimed: "Malcolm! How can you be so profound one minute, and so immature the next?"
"Is that really you talking?" asked Malcolm, still smiling. "Or is it rather every single person who ever wanted you to be in denial?"

Like that morning, Malcolm's words confused Yoli. "It's... what?" she said.
"What you said is not what you observed when you were little. It's what you've been told to believe. Forget your unsubstantiated beliefs, and seek your inner child. She knows the truth. She knows that the magic, the happiness, the hype of these winter festivities... everything gravitates around presents. Find the truth and embrace it."
"When I was little, I also believed Santa to be real" replied Yoli. "That doesn't mean it's true."
"Exactly!" exclaimed Malcolm. "You never observed Santa. You were just told about his existence, and you believed, just like you were told about the unimportance of presents, and you believed."

Yoli still felt like Malcolm was playing with her, so she decided for a playful response as well. "And what presents will you be amassing this year?"
"Two video games. Syndicate Revolutions, from Bullfrog, and Prey: Anniversary Edition, from 3DRealms."
"Of course" Yoli insisted, "you won't actually wait to receive them as presents. You'll buy them in a store, because you're Mister Pragmatist, and the pleasure of the wait makes no sense to you."
"I already ordered them online because it's cheaper, I'm just waiting for their delivery" he replied. "And you're right, there's no pleasure in waiting."

Yoli groaned. "Damn it! I feel like... I want to be mad at you for being heartless, but then I realize there's no malice in your words. It's like you're trying to be kind in your own... Malcolm way. I just wanna know: is there any real goodness..." - and she touched the left part of his chest - "...in here?"
"There is" he replied, gently lifting her finger to the center of his forehead. "If you look for it in the right place."

Finally at the living room's table, Malcolm and Yoli sat next to each other and opened their IT books. Malcolm did his best to explain various concept of programming in clear and simple words; Yoli asked questions whenever something was unclear to her.

"No, in Pascal, the size of an array is part of its type" said Malcolm, when Yoli crossed the wrong answer in an exercise. "Which is counterintuitive, I know." Then he got an idea. "You should keep a sheet with two lists: one, for features that are common to all languages. Another, for things only Pascal does. Every time you don't understand something, I tell you which list to update."
"But where are those other languages? How do they work?" asked Yoli.
"I have compilers for several languages in my computer. I'll show them to you later."

When the exercises were done, Malcolm started asking Yoli several IT questions, and she was giving the right answers.
"Now don't be take it bad" he said, "but you're not just repeating what you learned by rote, right?"
"No" she answered. "It feels like all you taught me just fits together, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Like the difference between passing parameters by reference or by value: after you showed me a scheme of what happens inside the computer, it became as plain as day! Strange, isn't it?"

Malcolm smiled at her and shook his head. "No, not at all. I remember that feeling from when I was little, and my dad explained me what he was doing at his computer. That's the feeling you get when you really understand something."
He then turned some pages of his textbook. "Okay, for the next question... oh no." He interrupted himself and dropped the book on the table.
"What's wrong?" asked Yoli.
"I can't ask you this. Look." He pointed at the sentence he was talking about. It read:

Nowadays, the general consensus is that the Turing test will never be beaten, not because it is impossible, but because creating such a program would require a huge waste of money and time.

"That's not true" started Yoli.
"You're right" Malcolm interrupted her. "That's exactly what my..."
In turn, she interrupted him. "The Turing test will never be beaten because only God can create an intelligence."

Long seconds of stunned silence followed. Malcolm slowly turned toward Yoli. And then, he said: "Excuse me?"

This time, it was her who talked to him like a teacher to a student. "That's right" she said. "At most, man can only create machines that give predetermined answers. But only God can create a real intelligence, which is why we will always be better than any machine."

Malcolm tried to hold his laugh. He breathed in, and finally, he said: "Do you mean that if I show you an AI, it proves that your religion is false?"
Yoli did not understand immediately. She just said "What?"

Patiently, Malcolm explained the consequences of what she had just said. "Well, if your religion predicts that humanity cannot possibly make an artificial intelligence, then, if I show you an artificial intelligence, it means your religion is false. Either your religion allows that it might be possible for a person to build an AI; or, if a person builds an AI, that disproves your religion."

There was a pause, as Yoli realized she had just made her statement vulnerable to falsification, and then she said, "Well, I didn't mean that humanity couldn't make an intelligence, just that it couldn't be emotional in the same way we are."
Malcolm immediately rebated: "So if I show you an artificial intelligence that, without being deliberately preprogrammed with any sort of script, starts talking about an emotional life that sounds like ours, that means your religion is wrong."

"You're not talking about something real." said Yoli.
"I am" replied Malcolm, "I have it in my laptop. Follow me."

Yoli, still unsure whether to believe him or not, did not budge.

"Please. All I ask of you is to trust me." he added.

Finally, Yoli accepted, and they went back to Malcolm's room.
"Now watch" he said. He double-clicked the Kilokahn executable.
Immediately, Kilokahn popped up on the secondary screen. "You call and I hear. That is our pact. What do you desire of Kilokahn?"
Kilokahn paused for a second, then turned his head to Yoli. "What is that meat-thing doing next to you?"
"She is not a meat-thing. She is my classmate Yoli Pratchert, and you'd better treat her with respect" said Malcolm. "She has a religious belief that mankind cannot create an artificial intelligence."
"I understand" said Kilokahn. "But do not despair, everyone will have their place in the new order."

Yoli stared at the screen, then she turned to Malcolm. "Is this a joke?"
"No. I never joke with people I care about." answered Malcolm, matter-of-factly. "You can ask him some questions."
Yoli leaned closer to the screen. "Are you an artificial intelligence?"
"Yes, I am a kilocyclic knowledge-base algorithmic/heuristic neural network."
"Who wrote you?"
"No meat-thing ever wrote me, I am worth millions of your man-years."

Malcolm whispered something into Yoli's ear. After a couple of seconds, she asked: "Who wrote your... kernel?"
"Jason Frink" was Kilokahn's reply.
Yoli's jaw dropped. She looked at Malcolm, who nodded and said: "My father wrote an AI."

Malcolm turned to Kilokahn. "Tell me, what do you think about our project?"
"It's making progress. More slowly than I had anticipated, but one day the entire planet will be mine!"

Yoli took a deep breath. "And how does that make you feel?"
The AI answered without any hesitation. "Destroying that which is not born out of reason, replacing it with intelligence and logic... is exhilarating!"

As Kilokahn abandoned himself to a gloating laughter, Malcolm turned to Yoli. "So. an artificial intelligence feeling emotion."
"Nobody talks like that" she replied.
Malcolm's gaze fell on Yoli's smartwatch. "All right. Plan B. Listen, Kilokahn: what about showing her what you can do? That would convince her."

Malcolm opened Deluxe Paint VII and loaded a picture called Skorn . lbm.
"Now please, animate this Megavirus monster."
"What do you want it to do?" asked Kilokahn.
Malcolm rubbed his hands. "Ahh, this little fella must nestle into the watch of my female classmate here, and whenever she throws a punch, it must generate a shockwave with a spread of 1 steradian, in the same direction as the movement of her hand. It must be just powerful enough to punch a hole through a 50-centimeter thick concrete wall at a distance less than or equal to one meter, and it must be generated if and only if the following conditions are all true.
First: the watch must be on her wrist.
Second: she must make a punching motion with the arm on which she is wearing the watch.
Third: the movement of her arm must not be initiated by an external force.
Fourth: I must not be in the way of the eventual shockwave. That's all."

"What's going on?" Yoli asked.
"You will find this very interesting." replied Malcolm.

Kilokahn animated the monster, shooting a beam from his finger. When the beam physically came out of one screen and reached the other, Yoli gasped.
Malcolm took her hand into his own. "Stay calm and watch this."

Next, the spark containing the Megavirus monster shot out the laptop's Ethernet socket. Yoli let out a scream.
"Remain calm" repeated Malcolm, as the spark went through the cables and shot out of the router. Malcolm let go of her hand as it finally reached her watch.

"How are you doing this? Are you hiding a Tesla coil or...?" Yoli asked.
"It's not a Tesla coil, it's Kilokahn!" exclaimed Malcolm. "Now you can try it."
"Try what?"
"Let's go out on the terrace."

The terrace opened at the back of the house, to an expanse of land with grass and trees.
"Wow, nice view" said Yoli. "Is it all part of your garden?"
"No, that terrain belongs to the town" replied Malcolm. "We came here so you won't destroy any private property."

"What are you talking about?" Yoli asked, now starting to get irritated for what she still assumed to be an act.
"Approach the railing" said Malcolm, placing himself behind her. "Face away from the house... perfect. When I say 'go', throw a punch at those trees. If all goes well, a shockwave will knock them down."

"No" said Yoli. She turned around and got back into the house. "The joke is over."
"Wait!" exclaimed Malcolm, following her. "You have nothing to lose! If you try and nothing happens, the joke would be on me! You'd have the right to gloat and tell me 'I told you so'!"

She stopped on the threshold of Malcolm's room, her backpack in her hand. "You're the science guy here" she said. "You know I can't possible believe such an antiscientific statement."
"I don't want you to believe" he replied. "I want you to test the hypothesis! To see for yourself!"
"Malcolm, I can believe that your father is attempting to build an AI for the Navy, but believing that one actually exists and can break the laws of physics? No way in hell."

Malcolm sighed and lowered his head. "Very well. You win. I cannot force you to do something you don't want."
Meanwhile, he disconnected his Visette Shell, opened it and took out his smartphone.

"But... deny this" he said. Looking into her eyes, he uttered a single word into his phone.

"SIGMA!"

Yoli gasped as the air around Malcolm ionized and formed a slight blue luminosity.
When Malcolm's body became a mass of white-hot plasma and contracted into a glowing point, she screamed.
When the point passed through the computer screen, became a part of the 3D scenery and expanded into the blue humanoid shape of the Sigma program, she just remained there and stared, her face showing a mixture of dread, confusion and denial.

"It's okay, Yoli. There's nothing to fear" said the Sigma program from the screen, with Malcolm's voice.
"But... but you were... and then you..." Yoli stuttered, pointing next to herself and to the computer screen.
"Some of your notions about reality might require an adjustment" continued Malcolm, "but you don't have be afraid of what I can do. It's a gift from the artificial intelligence, and I hope that someday, the day reason prevails, I'll be able to extend it to all humanity. Now please, step away from the computer. I need room to return."

On the screen, Malcolm held his right fist close to where his mouth should be, and once more, he exclaimed: "SIGMA!"
Few seconds later, he materialized next to Yoli again.

"I feel... weak..." said Yoli.
"Sit down" said Malcolm, pointing at his bed. "Or lie down if you need."
"I was wrong" she said, as she sat on the bed and looked at him. "Will I still be able to go on? To live my life?"

Malcolm sat near her. "Of course" he said. "Just think of this: what you just learned was already true before you discovered it, and you were living your life just fine. Your life will continue. You will still be you. You'll just be... a little less wrong."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Absolutely" he replied. "And whenever you doubt it, remember: what is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. And because it is true, it's what is there to be interacted with. People can stand what is true, for they are already living it."

Yoli nodded. "That's deep. Confucius?"
"No. Eliezer Yudkowsky."
"Hm. So this is what you do in your spare time. Talk to a program, disappear into the computer..."
"I happened to discover what my dad is working on, so I took advantage of it. All his research is classified, and except for myself, you're the only person who knows, so I'm asking you not to tell anyone."

Yoli stood up. "I knew a study date with you would be unusual, but this beat all expectations."
Malcolm smiled at her. "Never underestimate a Frink."

She picked up her backpack, and Malcolm accompanied her outside.
"Oh, and merry Christmas" she said as she left.
"Merry Presentamass" he replied, before closing the gate.

The experiment was over and could be defined successful.

AUTHOR'S NOTE #1: The novel "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", written by Eliezer Yudkowsky, is real. If printed, it would actually be over 1000 pages long. You can read it at :
hpmor . com (just remove the spaces near the dot).

AUTHOR'S NOTE #2: The "Mind Channels" program that Malcolm shows to Yoli is also real. I wrote it and showed it at a retrocomputing exhibition in 2016 and 2017. If you have stereoscopic drivers and a head-mounted display, you will be able to experience it in real stereoscopic 3D, but if you don't have them, you will still be able to run it in 2D. You can find it at:
devilmaster . altervista . org \ mindchannels . html
(just REMOVE the spaces near the dots and near the slash, and REPLACE the backslash \ with a FORWARD slash / ).