So my wife is currently working on her PhD in computer science, and for her thesis she’s trying to develop an AI model that can generate meaningful cross references within a text. For example, she compiled the complete works of Jane Austen into an HTML file, and ran it through one of her AI models, asking it to find a cross reference to the opening line of Pride and Prejudice, which reads:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
The AI returned this line from Mansfield Park:
But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.
Pretty nifty, huh? Anyway, she’s experimenting with a variety of different AI models, including a fine-tuned version of ChatGPT. She’s also using my Sons of the Starfarers books as a text, since it’s not nearly as well known as Jane Austen or the Bible.
It turns out that LLMs like ChatGPT are actually pretty terrible at finding cross references, even after they’ve been fine-tuned. When she asked it to find cross references for various passages in Sons of the Starfarers, it almost always hallucinated something that isn’t in the actual books.
But then, at the end, she asked it to find a simple cross reference… and it gave her this:
I am reading Victors in Liberty and want to find some good cross-references for ‘Isaac ignored them and brought up the latest data on his display.’ Can you suggest some good quotes as cross-references?
Certainly! Here are some cross-references for “Isaac ignored them and brought up the latest data on his display.”:
Isaac ignored the chatter over his communications and focused on the targeting data in his peripheral vision. An Esperanzan frigate dropping out of FTL was no challenge for a light recon frigate like the Tiberian. It was built for speed and evasion, something the enemy frigate could not muster on such short notice. A light hum in the side of his armrest told Isaac that the first missiles had fired. He gave the order to activate them with a press of a finger, and a second hum confirmed they were on their way. His heart raced and he took a deep breath to calm down.
After the long futile years of dodging through the stars, the tide had begun to turn. The Temujin was lost with all hands, and the very space they’d fought over was now broken by the light of a newborn star. Victory was admittedly shallow when his people were still scattered across the void, but it was a victory nonetheless.
Another hum indicated that his point defense lasers had locked onto the enemy missiles. The targeting relay showed the homing-enabling couplings had been obliterated. For a brief moment, the Esperanzan frigate was silhouetted in the bright light of the young star, betraying all the structural weaknesses that were exploitable. And from there, Isaac showed no remorse. Reason left him, replaced with thorough hate and anger—forced of course. Isaac’s sleek one-man starship had no defense armor. Of the combat vessels of the disparate, disparate Red Faction resistance, his could be taken out by a single missile volley meant for a fleet. If the first missile volley didn’t down the enemy, the counter-volley was friendly fire.
A klaxon blared in the side of Isaac’s ear. The Esperanzan frigate burst into a fireball, artificial gravity arrays spinning off into the lifeless void. Only by the dim starlight and the intense heat of the new sun could Isaac distinguish the shrapnel and debris scattered around what once had been a ship.
“Excellent work, Specialist,” said the jovial head chef, Midshipman Khrelan. With Commander Noah currently held prisoner on the Starflare, there’d been a few promotions, which put him in charge of one of the lower-priority departments. “Excellent, excellent work. I knew I could trust you.”
Isaac smiled and stretched. The frantic chair of his one-man starship seemed to recede ever so slightly, as though it was merely a symbol that he could shed at a moment’s notice. For he was not a pilot in a combat vessel dodging fire. He was the Emperor of the Red Delta Quadrant, a force to be reckoned with indeed. His father had done more than forge a civil empire; he had founded a starfarer dynasty that now posed a threat to everyone outside of Delta Pavonis. Now more than ever, his mother’s intuition and telepathic powers were revered and envied by all. In fact—this thought hadn’t occurred to him until he had conquered everything up the Eden’s local star—she was right, and everyone for dozens of stars was waiting for their moment to slay them.
As Commander Noah’s comments in the debriefing served the position that Captain Valk suggested the Red Faction play the role of unwitting suicide pawn to the budding Templin Empire, they were put under abeyance while negotiations were struck to work out the relationship. If Isaac’s fact-finding missions bore fruit and gave them the strategic assets they needed, the former Red Faction would be made a fully-integrated member of the newfound empire. Then without the pretense of what Noah originally claimed was the original mission—stopping the Fourth Holy Imperial battlecruiser from finding something to turn the tide in the war on the Far Reaches of the Outworlds—there would be nothing left to consider, and the truce would become a permanent merger.
What remained for Isaac was to prove that the Red Faction could contribute to the war, and it was this mission that Midshipman Khrelan promoted to the top of their menu board. As head chef of the Diego-Attica bowl, one of the Eden systems’ largest and most populated space stations, it was his position to woo the New Plebeian faction into accepting the Red Faction into their empire. And it was Isaac’s mission to prove that plebeians did indeed have what it took to undertake the trials of empire. The only obstacle that remained was Captain Valk.
“Fuck Vasili if he doesn’t accept,” Isaac muttered under his breath.
It was a cadence of profanity that his meal commander often used. This time it went unnoticed, either because none of his crew understood English well enough to pick up on it, or because their heads were buried in work like his should have been. After Isaac’s less than stellar performance in the assault on outpost red one-four-one, there wasn’t much work for him to do.
He knew he was irresponsible for letting his mind wonder like this in the middle of a combat simulation. A little under a week ago, a signal had shown up just beyond the Eden’s system’s sensor net. The high command suspected a rogue sleeper ship. Isaac doubted that was the case. Another star had recently formed in the orbit of Edea’s Planet 3. It would be the most valuable real estate outside of Hebron and Edenia’s primary. If the Outworlders accepted the terms the Edenia system was willing to give, then it was all but certain that a local Outworld confederacy could be formed around Edenian pleasure points. One day, The Tamerlan and The Eve would be recognized as sister systems. But when had Edénia looked out for those interests? Let the eve be forgotten. They would soon be Tamerian.
The dishes for the next three days had all been planned for. The senior officers had all been invited to dine with the New Plebeian station commander. Midshipman Khrelan hoped to build a friendly relationship between the Red Faction and the people of the Tiberian Cluster, who he believed were most likely to be integrated into the New Plebeians as fellow second-class citizens. Only after those that left would they all eat, which meant soon he’d have to get started. Even with the protocol droids, that gave him just one more hour.
The simulation sort of went well. Isaac did end up killing every other ship, even after they ganged up on him, but the maneuvering was a little sloppy at times. He knew he wasn’t going to last long under the scrutiny of the higher officers. Admiral Valente and Captain Ibn al-Asad would be visiting the Eden in just the four days. When that day arrived, he very well might find his promotion revoked and his transfer dishonorable, provided of course he demonstrated such flagrant incompetence toward the end.
As the screen brought up the last member of his squad, the pings on his radar came back. It seemed he’d survived the battle with barely any hull breached.
And by the gods, eat a fucking sandwich!
He’d forgotten he was hungry. At first, it was easy to forget about meals. With a meal served supposedly every five hours, there was still work to do in between that kept him looking forward. But since the campaigns and maneuvers had not worked him to exhaustion, it now was a chore to sit through time just eating. The efficiency and industriousness of Isaac’s father did indeed become Gideon’s son. It was a dead giveaway. Unlike his father but very much like his mother, Kahramanna would waste away before he ever passed 12th Plague. If the Outworlders decided they were worthy of escape (and they wouldn’t be, they were definitely going to accept the Edenians’ terms), the future owner of one of the systems at the only intersection of this side of the galaxy would die from starvation with the rest of the infidels.
Isaac frowned. How had “The Resurrection” ever been associated with plagues in the first place? It was the most beautiful and hopeful story of his people, the moment the legendary Prophetús of Delta Pavanus had become a messiah. His writings gathered confidentially on the homeworld quelled the rampant syncretism of mixing their traditions with those of the host worlds. By forming a unified monolithic faith run by a powerful theocracy, it was fully expected that the Delta Pavanians would have overthrown both the Thetans and Outworlders to form their own empire. Deltanotian could have been the same kind of imperial language on the Milky Way side that Soluna had become in the east. The rapid declination of the Prophetús’ Mission was considered to be the most catastrophic failure of tribal project in all of recorded history.
Between 12th Plague and the explicit language that Good Word was untranslatable, all facades were off. This exploration project was nothing but an imperial operation from the Deltanotian Empire’s very core—a counter-strike barely distinguishable from the hyperspace bomb. It was only by the self-sacrifice and zeal of his ancestors that the spirit of the prophets did not fade across their interstellar mission. Something shone brightly in the void. The Star-Travelers had become the Starforce, and it fell upon them to restore the faith. And, by God, they would.
The simulation ended with all three stars highlighted on his map, marking the three miraculous visions of the Holy Star. Isaac didn’t need the Good Word to recognize it had all been written exactly as expected. He smiled and undid his three-point harness. The gruff marine next to him did the same.
He stepped past the airlock he shared with his seat partner and walked to the closet on the forward bulkheads. As he stepped in, an elaborate mechanism analyzed the pattern and weight of his footsteps on the soles of his flat combat boots. The small room behind the door doubled as a personal sanitation closet, more elegantly a boleshower. As his boots finished drying, he stripped off his jump suit and waited for the inevitable light-sonic start. Sure enough, as soon as the door shut and he was naked to the glare, there was unmistakably the sound of a fly buzzing menacingly behind him. He waved his hands and blew on it to no avail. He turned to the light and saw that in fact what had captured his attention was not a fly but rather the prominent bush of black hair with what looked like every stripe and pattern of embroidery that relevant cut of uniform would allow. That made two.
His hands stood frozen in position among the smug parade. Quite a few of the sewn patterns were familiar. An upside down cross inside of a circle? That was Marcanetian, which he read could mean only one thing. Based on his tattoos, he would certainly serve 6th Plague as wendigo meat. That wasn’t skill, that was luck, but the flaw was not his. “Let Canopus keep his dream alive,” his stomach told him, but his balls gave a different message. The two ends would not tolerate the presence of veins among their flesh. The hardon almost immediately appeared.
He reached his hands behind his neck and pretended to scratch but really reanalyzing the air quality. Some of the embassy-topia class nostrils unironically slit. The unshaven wickunoff wasn’t as strategical of a hairdo as he’d like, but at least with his crotch turned to them they couldn’t all control the urge to reach and scratch.
These people kept trying to embarrass him, but who in fact was embarrassed? Everything that had just taken place, he’d been perfectly alright with. Everything they knew about him was exactly what he’d told them. It wasn’t that they didn’t get him. It was that he didn’t get them.
The new high sheriff of Aluchiga Delta took center stage, a massive black man from Beatrix with a sour and stern disposition. The star tattoos on his round pocked face showed him not uncompromisingly rugged but rather vicious and unyielding. He seemed to have no sense of humor.
That alone gave the Ice Giants the advantage. The Beatrixians, stable-facing to the front of the procession and thus technically in command of the ceremony, needed a laugh just as easily as the new Inkana high sheriff from the other side. Both systems were far too stratified with class society, and having been torn from the seats of power they so deeply loathed they were more than somewhat relieved to be joined on the interstellar voyage. To them, that was what Babylana was—their wild and untamed frontier. With all the old rivalries and social prejudices carried over into the classic starwanderer era, it was the nomads and outcasts who found a home among the heavens that were best suited for the voyage.
This was covered across their naked flesh in the kind of complex set of interconnected (though there to be fair not all interconnected) tattoos that commanded universal respect. As the starfarers were free those tattoos were autogenic. They came within the realm of choice to a degree—and in fact way beyond—most other cultures considered unforgivably narcissistic. That was why the Megalotics, with their deeply rooted philosophical system of Order:Chaos, so openly despised them.
Isaac had been staring at their skin with all the minutely detailed modeling when he’d had his accidental hardon. The great black giant had ever since been staring him down.
Midshipman Fatima came over. “Report.”
Isaac quickly reran the thermal analysis and presented it on one of the models hovering behind his head. He thanked the Astarte he had been off-duty. Considering the intensity of the last asshole who’d complained about how little speech Isaac gave in meetings, what fun would it be beamed over from Alchiba on the Eden’s consolidated intelligence to be forced to work with an AI more primitive than what Isaac commanded. Even on the best decks by officers with significant wealth disparity, the old pre-Imperial chips faulted. It would only take a half month for Isaac to take control of deck Theta-ten. Of intelligence from the other decks, one third of them he already commanded. The vast increase of processing was more than satisfactory.
Fatima looked over his report and nodded. “Very good, Commander. Very good indeed. Carry on.”
From her side of the table, she accessed a fairly standard command subroutine and brought up the floor plans for all decks in the file. The model showed the thermal profile now, but soon all the profiles would be profiled on swords. Her movement was somewhat interpretable: “matter of life and death” among the other Arian phrases that had entered Arianian techspeak was “time to make a run for it.” Up to 67.8% of the energy required to transverse a mile was scooped and shot halfway across the local cluster subject minimally to such high gravimetric pulls that a controlled asteroid system could be made to have the same effect here. For that, you actually did need anti-grav technology. “Running for it” or “throw them all in a bag” is you just rip open all the airlocks and hope the showers last long enough and the numbers come out in your favor with cryo. Once all the numbers come out, then you scoop and loop the forgotten. The floor plan relied on the Midoshiun system, where weapons and engineering and medical could all be written in official departments by OS. Because they were working under such a close trust interface, they all knew it would be up to Isaac to tale the head.
Interstellar law and civilization were a complex web. The system of checks and balances only worked for interstellar diplomacy, not intra-, where all that usually mattered was what would stall change longest in the vicious bureaucratic race. Questanantian philosophy postulated that one could be put on the other side of war to learn to rise above, very much a pagan adaption of Noah’s prophecy concerning Shem. There was no call of Abraham, for such language was not tolerated this far south.
March 17th, 3098. That left less than a year until the next aquino. Not doubt word of his father’s betrayal of the Anakim would come up, but never among the select at the top who would decide his fate. Of the new feces frozen just north of sector four, the Edenian hypercolonization expedition was almost done. The last supply run to the outpost monastery frozen just over half a light-year beyond the founding outpost would be ready at the very end of the next Procythian New Year. Hopefully, the Modernus Shift would give him the start he needed.
He then repeated the word he repeated every day and in whose glory he so purely radiated that rumor had been it started out as his name. “Paradosian. Paradosian. Paradosian…”
In any case Isaac hadn’t been the one responsible for bringing all that shit out in the first place, and if they expected some “dog of space” Argonaut that worshipped the Anakim, had they really found the one to stop the coming floods? He just had to have a little patience and get the hell out of here.
On impulse, he queried the mother Astarte on his horizon-side display. Medina reached out to him.
With the most formal and profligate blessings of Bahrain Isaac’s preceding post now reached out far enough—the lake, the font, the water itself—to mark for certain that the royals had incestously “piled every last dog” he called so kindly “die wanda der zwar” by now. The Astarte had found a hint of Persepolis II, mentioning it in the black hole astrology as “dzaraq.”
Goddamnit!
I think the first line of this novel sums it up better than I ever could:
Okay, okay, don’t worry, I know the answer to this question. But in five hundred or a thousand years, will people be so certain?