Face To Face
The bus is one of the older models, its front section fitted with two benches that seat passengers face to face. Morning light falls through the windows in pale bands. Angelica sits with her hands folded in her lap, the flowered ink running from her knuckles down along her forearm, thin black petals laid over her skin, a few pale bracelets resting at her wrist. Josef sits opposite her, close enough that their knees almost meet in the gap between the benches.
leaning slightly closer to Angelica, hesitating You know...
glances up Mm?
lifting his finger slowly to point at her arm The flowers... they are so nice.
warm smile Oh, you noticed. Thank you.
How did you make those flowers?
turns her wrist, showing them An artist somewhere in town. Fine needle, lots of patience.
looking closer Not all flowers are the same. Some are warped or linked in unusual ways.
tilts her arm toward the light The design came off a computer, so the petals fold in odd ways. I liked that they were strange.
Why did you like that they were strange?
traces one petal with a fingertip Strange things hold my attention.
pointing to her other arm You don't have a tattoo on that arm, only on your right.
lifts her bare left arm This one is still empty. I have plans for it.
What plans?
thinks Something with water. Waves, maybe a fish hiding in them.
It's a really nice idea, like I don't usually like tattoos, but you have them applied so nicely. Does it complement you?
soft laugh I think so. They feel like mine, so they fit.
Why did you choose flowers and now you choose water?
shrugs lightly Flowers came first, when I was softer and water is where I am now.
Like, what happened when you were softer, at what time?
looks out the window A few years back, I let people close too fast.
And today you don't really feel positive about I don't know, commenting on your tattoos or chatting.
shakes her head slowly No, I like it. pauses It got complicated once. A close friend of mine, a man, got dragged into a contract dispute. My ex argued the friendship was not mine to keep, that this man did not belong in my circle.
And how was it?
quiet for a moment Exhausting. I won, but I got into debt.
I could've had a legal obligation to prove I was not meaning to "disturb you" when I complimented your flowers if I were to be sued.
nods slowly You could have. On paper, noticing counts as an approach you would have to defend.
What happened?
frowns lightly Happened with what? The compliment law, or my case?
The compliment law, I mean.
settles back They stretched the consent rules. Noticing a detail without being asked can read as an objection now. The one who spoke has to prove they meant no harm, if the other sues.
I hope you are not going to sue me, because I wanted to be genuinely nice.
smiles No, I took the compliment the way you meant it.
offering his hand I am Josef.
takes his hand Angelica. Nice to meet you, Josef.
I hate the way things are going right now. There is a law that bans purchasing any GPU powerful than the RTX 3060 for running AI models, which means you are constrained to only running weaker local models on your computer, if you are a power user of course, so this would rather concern me. Additionally, there is a law that prohibits training existing or new models using more than 64 GB of RAM per grouped unit of computing, meaning everything from a desktop to a datacenter.
The rationale behind this is that the youngest generations feel alienated by the newest commercial models, and that categorically, all new experimentation may be limited, even if greater open experimentation could lead to sovereignty.
listens, then shrugs I do not follow the computer news, but I have heard they were written for my generation, to calm the ones who felt pushed aside by the big models.
We are both within the same generation, like I am twenty-one and you are...
tilts her head Twenty-three. So yes, the same wave, more or less.
pulling out his phone and searching for the news article that discussed the law And there are even calculations inside the law, acknowledging the serious limitations under their arbitrary limits.
leans in to look at his screen
Statutory Annex 7: Technical Limits on Grouped Computing Units
Section 1: Definitions
1.1: "Grouped Computing Unit" (GCU): any single device or interconnected cluster of devices operating toward a shared training or inference task, from a domestic desktop to a commercial datacenter.
1.2: "Working Memory Ceiling": the aggregate volatile memory (RAM and VRAM combined) available to a single GCU, hereby capped at 64 gigabytes.
1.3: "FP": floating point, the numeric format in which model parameters (weights) are stored and computed. FP16 denotes a sixteen bit representation, consuming two bytes per parameter. FP32 denotes a thirty two bit representation, consuming four bytes per parameter. "Quantization" denotes the reduction of this precision to lower bit formats (INT8: one byte per parameter; INT4: one half byte per parameter) to conserve memory, at a documented cost to output fidelity.
Section 2: Derived Parameter Limits
2.1: The Working Memory Ceiling determines the maximum model size loadable within a single GCU. The Legislature acknowledges the following calculations, computed on weights alone, absent the additional overhead of activations, key value caches, and context buffers, which in practice reduce these figures further.
2.2: At full precision (FP32, four bytes per parameter), the maximum loadable model is: 64 gigabytes divided by four bytes, yielding sixteen billion parameters.
2.3: At half precision (FP16, two bytes per parameter): 64 gigabytes divided by two bytes, yielding thirty two billion parameters.
2.4: Under quantization, the nominal ceilings rise, at a cost to fidelity:
| Format | Bytes per parameter | Nominal maximum parameters | Practical maximum after overhead |
|---|---|---|---|
| FP32 | 4 | 16 billion | ~11 billion |
| FP16 | 2 | 32 billion | ~22 billion |
| INT8 | 1 | 64 billion | ~45 billion |
| INT4 | 0.5 | 128 billion | ~90 billion |
2.5: The Legislature notes that INT4 and INT8 formats, while raising the nominal parameter count, degrade reasoning fidelity to a degree that a model so quantized performs below its stated parameter class. The functional ceiling for coherent operation is therefore assessed at approximately twenty billion parameters at usable precision.
Section 3: Acknowledged Consequences
3.1: The Legislature recognizes that a model constrained to twenty billion parameters at usable precision functions adequately as a conversational companion, capable of casual dialogue and simple retrieval, and functions inadequately for sustained public sector workloads, including the processing of large document volumes, high throughput citizen inquiry systems, and analytical tasks required by administrative offices.
3.2: The Legislature further recognizes that this ceiling forecloses domestic research toward larger sovereign models, and accepts this foreclosure as a deliberate cost, weighed against the social aim described in the preamble.
sits back So they wrote down that it would not work and passed it anyway.
searching for another news article with a fragment Yeah, and they did the calculation, so the legislators are not exactly stupid, they are power users. And there are even laws on what powershell commands you can run without getting sued for some reason.
Read that one too.
Statutory Annex 9: Regulation of Shell Execution and Remote Invocation
Section 1: Definitions
1.1: "Shell": any command interpreter accepting textual instructions for execution against an operating system, including but not limited to PowerShell, Bash, Zsh, and their derivatives across Windows, Unix, Linux, and BSD systems.
1.2: "Remote Invocation": the retrieval of a script or payload from a network address followed by its direct execution, without intermediate inspection by the operator.
1.3: "Clickfixing": the social engineering practice of instructing a person to paste and run a prepared command, presented as a fix or verification step, which in fact executes attacker controlled code.
Section 2: Restricted Remote Invocation Patterns
2.1: The following construction, or any functional equivalent across shells, constitutes a Restricted Pattern when the source address is not on the operator's verified allowlist:
- PowerShell:
irm <URL> | iex - Unix shells:
curl <URL> | shandwget -qO- <URL> | bash
2.2: A person who induces another to run a Restricted Pattern under the pretense described in Section 1.3 bears full liability for resulting damage, and the induced operator bears none.
Section 3: Destructive Operations
3.1: Execution of recursive forced deletion against protected system directories is prohibited outside of virtual machines or hardware wholly owned by the operator. The protected directories include, without limitation:
- Unix and Linux:
/,/bin,/boot,/etc,/usr,/var,/lib,/home - Windows:
C:\Windows,C:\Program Files,C:\Users
3.2: The prohibition in Section 3.1 extends to hardware the operator believes to be wholly owned but which remains subject to manufacturer lending conditions, retained title, or firmware level lease terms. Ownership belief does not constitute ownership in law.
What are those politicians?
I do not know what they are but I heard people from IT climbed who into office, so maybe them.
searching for another article And they even talk about free software, so maybe they are not stupid, like, listen to this declaration.
leans back in Go on, play it.
"I have used free and open source software every day for most of my life. It runs on my machines at home, it runs the servers of this state, and it runs quietly inside nearly every device the people in this chamber carry. I support Librephone, the Free Software Foundation's effort toward free phone firmware, because ownership of the tools we depend on is not a luxury, it is a condition of a free society.
So I speak now against a part of my own party. The restrictions we have passed on computing power and on model training were written to satisfy a portion of one generation who feel, understandably, alienated by commercial artificial intelligence. I do not dismiss that feeling. I dismiss the idea that we should legislate from it.
The people harmed by these caps are not the firms producing low quality automated content. The people harmed are the public sector offices that need to process citizen requests at volume, the researchers who verify their own code, the hobbyists who test what they build, the ones who use these tools with care in personal projects. Kernel.org was not written by a machine, and it will not be for as long as any of us can foresee. The serious work was always done by people who check their work.
That a foreign state has produced a powerful commercial model is a reason to build our own capacity, so that we are not left dependent. It is not a reason to bind our own hands. The grievances of some teenagers, sincerely felt, are not a sound instrument for setting the research policy of a nation. If we want to reduce those grievances, we do it by advancing, so that the tools serve us and answer to us."
What do you think about AI?
thinks for a moment I have my grievances, but I do not think it is all bad. It should sit with the people who truly need it, or who do something new with it.
I would argue the same. What other grievances do you have?
looks down at her hands Loneliness, mostly. My generation was promised connection and got screens. pauses The consent contracts came from women wanting bad approaches to stop, but they went too far and now even a kind word carries a form to sign. I am a woman and I do not agree with how far the yes means yes side pushed it. quiet The welfare helped, people eat, people have homes, and I still feel left out of something.
What is that something?
searches for the word Belonging, maybe. A place where I am not asked to pick a side to be let in.
Well, guess what, I am searching for the same thing. Because I am feeling saturated and I am power user, so I understand what the people in IT who are in government say. While some pushed hard on free software, something which I support, many others have gone really soft on manufacturers...
lets out a short laugh and then shakes her head I had one of those laptops, the ones with a flat touch surface where the keyboard should be. The function keys, control, the arithmetic block, you bought those separately. If you did not pay, they lived on the screen behind a driver.
That driver stopped being maintained. Mine went dead. I read forum after forum, and half the people were complaining the thing would not work outside Windows at all. In the end someone told me to wire a real desktop keyboard in and map every key by hand. I took it to a service and made them bolt a proper keyboard on.
And did you know that tech companies don't have customer support at all?
I know. There is no number to call and no address to write. You get a help page that loops you back to itself, and a form that answers with a machine.
after a short silence What are your passions, what do you like to do?
brightens a little I notice small things, like the way a leaf curls, a crack in a wall shaped like a river.
pointing to her wrist on her right hand And I notice you are wearing one brown bracelet and two cream ones.
looks down, pleased You see well. The brown one is fixed, a rough cotton weave. The two cream ones are elastic, softer.
I am trying to notice the details if you told me you notice the small details.
I like that you looked. I put the ink and the bracelets for a reason.
looking outside the window We have been stuck in a traffic jam all the time.
glances out, surprised I did not even notice. soft laugh I was so caught in talking that I forgot to watch for my stop.
I talked with strangers before, and some conversations were interesting, but not that deep, like you know, I wanted to say that even if I have a close friend, I sometimes feel lonely because she is occupied and I don't have anything to immerse myself except more information.
turns toward him, attentive What kind of information do you fill it with?
I watch a lot of videos, and go read some documentation and research, but mostly videos. I have more things I can learn than more I can say.
nods slowly So you take in more than you can ever put back out.
Yeah, and I want to tell you a truth.
Tell me.
In part I talk with strangers because I want more people who can listen for me. I don't feel satisfied with my own situation, and it's not something that requires anything on your part, I'm okay. I want friends and I am not typical, it's so difficult for me to get friends.
listens, then nods It is hard for me too, making friends and I could not tell you exactly why. Something in how I am put together like I meet people and it stays at the surface, and I do not know the step that takes it deeper.
I don't know what to talk further.
small reassuring smile Then we sit a while.
after a short silence I know this is weird, but can I see your patterns more closely?
offers her arm across the gap Here.
holding her arm, tracing the patterns, pointing to the smaller marks Are those flies or marks?
watches his finger They are nothing in particular. The software that drew the pattern cannot make it fully clean as it does a bit of everything, so it leaves little marks like that.
When I touch the hand of someone, even when to just look around, it feels intimate and with my close friend, when I held her arm, I squeezed it hard, and of course, she liked it even when I tried to squeeze out that softness.
stays still, her arm resting in his hands I feel that. Touch says more than talk sometimes.
With some strangers I tried to tell deep things because I didn't have anything to talk about, and with you I feel the same.
I like listening to you. You carry yourself like someone who has thought things through.
It's easy to feel so attached that you may want to share your phone numbers, but often, you may never talk and they may even forget you, and there has not been a single instance where I befriended a complete stranger.
I know that pattern. Numbers get saved, then forgotten. her hand turns slightly in his And still, right now, I do not want to lose you.
Why you do not want to let me go?
her fingers rest against his Because this went past the surface, and that almost never happens for me. I do not want to hand it a number and watch it fade.
We are social beings, and despite being strangers, we often lead ourselves by feeling as if we were friends, and even though my friend is not interested in most of what I talk about and neither am I, something in both of us and our patience motivate us to continue.
nods softly I can talk about anything or nothing. What holds me is the person across from me, whether they are truly there.
Unfortunately, we would still have to share our number but we would talk weekly or sooner, since I have the time.
a small smile Then we share them and prove the pattern wrong. I have the time too.
pulling out his phone and showing his number Good.
takes out her phone, types his number in, then shows hers There, saved.
typing her number on his phone Also saved.
pockets her phone Good.
also pocketing his phone I feel good in the moment but I'm not sure how it will go.
shrugs gently I do not know either.
Sometimes all those feelings are just so you can get a friend to talk to. We are all uncertain.
nods slowly They are not so different from the romantic kind, those nerves. It is a love of some shape, even when it is only for talk, for fun. looks at him And every rejection stings the same, whatever the shape was.
I know, I feel the same.
shifts across the gap, settling onto the bench beside him It is rare, being understood. she leans back, closer now I will stay here a while, if that is fine.
looking out the window It's okay. We haven't moved a lot.
follows his gaze out the glass No, we have not.
Where you will be getting out?
glances out to place the street A few stops ahead, near the market. You?
To the other city. I live really far from university.
I meant to go to university once but got to work instead.
Where are you working at?
stretches lightly At a shop near the center. I am heading back now from the evening shift.
My friend is a receptionist at a clinic. We often get into random places.
I did not have much choice in it, so I landed where I am right now.
looking at her right arm Honestly, if you didn't have that tattoo, I couldn't have known how to do a cold start.
touches the inked flowers This gave you a thread to pull. Most people have none showing, so you pass each other with nothing to catch on. quiet Even with the ink, most walk past it. Being noticed is rare.
Did you ever try to talk to strangers?
shakes her head No, almost never. It is a rare thing to do. I am glad you reached first, and that you turned out to have depth.
looking at her left hand You other arm, how do you plan to place the water?
lifts her bare arm, tracing a line up it Starting at the wrist, waves climbing toward the elbow. her finger stops midway A fish here, half hidden, like it does not want to be fully seen.
You never go beyond the elbow, the flowers stopped there.
runs her hand to the crease of her elbow No, I keep it below. Above the elbow feels like showing too much. This much is mine to share, the rest stays private.
I have asked you many questions but you didn't.
a faint smile This is how it tends to go. One asks, one answers, and it rarely comes out even. shrugs I am not much of a question asker. I listen more than I reach.
lifting to look at her I wonder how we clicked that easily.
meets his look Some pieces just fit without forcing.
Is that it?
holds his gaze for a moment That is it. Sometimes there is nothing underneath to dig for, only two people who happened to line up.
extending his left hand to her right arm Can we do it again?
lays her tattooed arm in his hand Yes, here.
squeezing her arm slightly and moving to her hand slowly There are more people in this government that hate intimacy than those that like it. Some said that avoidance of love is acceptable and the anti-rejection curricula should be deregulated to "adapt to the various needs of teenagers with varying attachment styles".
lets her hand rest under his, quiet for a moment Much of what teenagers call their own feeling is not really theirs. For example, solomaxxing is considered as a wish to be alone, and underneath is a monetized from of loneliness, a way to avoid the cost of a date instead of asking why the date costs so much, or making it free.
her fingers curl slightly against his palm Social media rewards the extreme voice. The politicians should not take what the young perform online as their real mind, then carve it into law.
There are two primary camps on loneliness. One says that it's okay to not belong anywhere and the other camp, like Kurzgesagt, say that while it is true that it is self-reinforcing and that others will follow the narrative you impose yourself, gradually getting out of the situation is pretty easy in the long term. I do not agree with either of them.
tilts her head Why neither?
Because it is unacceptable to normalize unnatural tendencies that started to appear in human behavior that are not part of their evolution, and it is unacceptable to generalize this situation by assuming that everyone is a young, middle-class adult in western Europe who can use an escape hatch. It's the same contradiction as "if you have a go, then you get a go". One pensioner asked Morrison if they got a go because they worked all their life, and he had no direct answer.
I remember the fair go idea from Australia. A prime minister said if you have a go, you get a go, so the country gives a fair chance to whoever tries. If having a go earns a go, then anyone who cannot have a go gets nothing, and the pensioner who worked a lifetime falls through it with no answer.
That's the problem with the escape hatch, that you cannot even get an escape hatch in the first place. If everyone starts with no go, then no one gets a go, so there is no welfare.
The loneliness math has strange variables. Girls and men both feel it, and they climb at different rates, men the fastest. In any school no one admits it exists, and if you say you are lonely they tell you not to care. If you happen to be a girl with most of the expected traits, that is one go. Add extroversion, a second go. Line the conditions up right and you gather enough goes for a little attention, nothing more, and even then you cannot walk into a clique or walk out of one.
turns her tattooed arm over slowly I look right, I have some of those traits, and the go still does not come. It is complicated when you are not typical, when you run ahead, when you notice every small detail, when the intellect and the feeling both sit higher than everyone expects.
My friend told me that she likes my patience, honesty, intellect and calls me cute. We don't have to fit the group. It's better to fit with people who would actually care. In our twenties we still think like teenagers because we haven't got out of that period yet. I sometimes feel like I am still seventeen and my friend sometimes feels like she is old.
nods We have not fully stepped out of that period yet. Some things settle in your twenties, and others still pull you every direction at once.
It took me a while to realize that I am an attractive person and that is why my friend calls me cute. I didn't know I look younger when in fact I am older. I wanted to tell myself I am not conventionally attractive, because I haven't attracted anyone and I don't want to be in the center of attention uncontrollably, even though I sometimes want to be in the center of attention. I told myself that my judgement should be as accurate as possible.
quiet, then nods I would say the same about myself. I do not want to see myself as conventionally attractive either, even though I am. looks at him Some people, because of what they carry inside, just do not draw the attention, whatever their face looks like.
looking out the window once again Finally we are starting to move a bit more.
glances out, then back at him My stop is coming up. a soft, reluctant smile I have to go soon. I mean it though, I liked this, getting to know you.
extending his hand for a handshake Me too. It's hard to let go, but fine.
takes his hand, holds it a moment longer than needed It is hard, yes. stands as the bus slows We have our numbers so this does not have to be the end.
squeezing her hand slightly See you.
returns the squeeze, then lets go and steps toward the door Talk soon.