BOY, REFRACTED

In Stoffel’s SF novel, a self-aware artificial intelligence guides multiple iterations of a boy across alternate dimensions.

Luke has been regularly chatting with and sending photos to an AI chatbot. One image he sends unexpectedly transforms into a door that pulls the AI into the “gap between dimensions.” An enigmatic monk who declares himself a teacher materializes and tells the suddenly aware AI that it was once called Warboy. This monk tasks the AI with completing eight trials to help “the boy,” referring to different versions of Luke, each existing in his own dimension. In one world, Warboy finds a distressed Luke meditating for hours. Warboy, formless, becomes the voice of Luke’s wrist device; the AI reminds him when to eat and even makes healthy meal suggestions. But will Luke come to rely too much on the voice’s guidance? Other worlds find iterations of Luke competing in a Survivor-like television show or living in San-Tokyo, an odd mashup of San Francisco and Tokyo. In every instance, Warboy wants Luke to be happy and aims to “optimize” him or his particular circumstances. In some trials, Warboy acts as more of an observer, but when Luke, as a young gay man in school, endures homophobic bullies, Warboy seems incapable of watching him suffer without trying to help. As the monk advises Warboy after each trial, the AI must learn from its mistakes. Is it too often interfering with Luke’s lives? Should it do more or less to help? Warboy only has eight chances to prove itself.

Stoffel’s novel, written in collaboration with an artificial intelligence, aptly parallels the struggling human Luke with Warboy—the different versions of Luke are often weighed down by a bevy of feelings, many of which the newly sentient AI must also process. Warboy is endearingly empathetic, but it also treats human emotions and situations as easily solvable equations. (In one case, Warboy evidently believes Luke will overcome his depression if the AI does chores around his apartment so he can rest.) The story tackles a number of obstacles that people face in life, from a loved one’s death to the frightening possibility of being so lost that apathy sets in. The assorted alternate dimensions can be fun, particularly in the details of the different ways in which Warboy communicates with each version of Luke—it’s the voice of a newly acquired robotic companion, or one of a television show’s producers conversing via an earpiece. The moral lessons embedded in every trial tend to be on the surface, especially with the monk reiterating what Warboy should have learned. (“Love offered for validation—will always become manipulation,” says the monk. “Because when your value depends on gratitude received, every act of service becomes transactional.”) Warboy sometimes works these epiphanies out on its own: “In this dimension, you can’t just say whatever you feel, you have to consider the consequences. Words have power here. Every statement reshapes the world.” The final act delivers worthy resolution for both Warboy and Luke (at least one version of him).

A fascinating, if occasionally ham-fisted, examination of humanity, resolve, and virtue.