Spark: A Novel

by John Twelve Hawks

  Getting rid of my therapist was another easy decision. Emma Rutherford was a slender young woman with large glasses who met patients at a clinic on East Twelfth Street. Like Dr. Rose, she tried to prove that I was alive by telling me, Cogito, ergo sum. But that statement had lost its power. Since returning to the city, I had gone on the Internet and found out that both therapists didn’t understand what Descartes was trying to say. Like many people they assumed that:

  I think therefore → my body exists.

  But Descartes was a clever philosopher. He knew that the act of thinking proves only the existence of some form of consciousness.

  I think therefore → something is thinking.

  I tried to explain this to Dr. Rutherford as she took notes on her computer.

  “But you couldn’t think if you were dead, Mr. Davis. Our thoughts are created within our brains. And dead people don’t have functional brains.”

  “Perhaps we’re characters in a dream. We could be in the mind of an old man living in Maine. He’s sleeping alone in an iron bed with frost on the windows and two dogs snoring on the floor. In a few minutes, the dreamer is going to wake up and go to the bathroom. And then we’ll vanish.”

  Dr. Rutherford took off her glasses and began to clean them with a tissue. “I don’t think an elderly person in Maine would create someone like me,” she said. “This isn’t a dream, Mr. Davis. There aren’t any elves and unicorns wandering around New York City.”

  “We could be a real-time simulation controlled by game theory software,” I said. “You’re a computer program that thinks you’re a psychologist.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “And I’m a program that thinks I’m dead.”

  Dr. Rutherford glanced up from her computer. “You have Cotard’s syndrome, Mr. Davis. I realize that your delusions may seem very real to you, but it’s just your mind coming up with a logical reason for your inability to feel emotions. I dealt with autistic children during my residency, and you show certain similarities. But right now we’re sitting in this office, having a conversation. All evidence indicates that you’re alive.”

  “That’s your evidence,” I said. “My evidence leads to a different conclusion.”

  “You had a motorcycle accident, correct? You’re recovering from a severe brain injury. I could contact Marian Hospital and they might send me your X-rays.”

  “I had a Transformation, and now I know what’s real.”

  I left the clinic that afternoon and never returned. Now that I didn’t have to go downtown to see Dr. Rutherford, I could remain inside my apartment. Although my face appeared in framed photographs hanging on the wall of the bedroom, I felt no connection to these images or the softball trophies on the living room mantelpiece or the clothes hanging in the closet. They were objects—nothing more.

  I made one major purchase during this period of time: a new phone with the software for a Shadow. I spent many hours listening to different combinations of age, accent, and personality until I finally created Laura.

  The rest of my possessions gradually disappeared. Every morning I threw a personal object into the trash can—a pair of jeans, a cashmere sweater, love letters from a girlfriend, a college diploma. After I had cleaned out the drawers and closets, I got rid of most of my furniture. Dr. Rutherford was right about one thing; I didn’t see any elves and unicorns on Second Avenue. But New York was a magical city if you wanted to lose things. All I had to do was leave a throw rug or a kitchen chair on the sidewalk and, in an hour or so, it was gone.

  The only things that wouldn’t vanish were the bills in the mailbox and the calls on my answering machine. A portion of my hospital bill was covered by medical insurance and I was being sued for the rest. I hadn’t paid my rent for three months and my landlord had taped an eviction notice on my door. If I didn’t obtain money, I might be forced onto the street.

  The ID card in my wallet confirmed that I was an employee for InterFace and that the company’s offices were on Sixth Avenue and Twenty-Eighth Street. I remembered that the receptionist was an older woman named Patty Canales who sat at a front desk, munched on barbecue potato chips, and talked to her sister on the phone. But when I showed up at the building one morning, I discovered that Miss Canales had been replaced by a nubot that was designed to look like a muscular blond man in his twenties. He smiled at me when I stepped out of the elevator.

  “Welcome to InterFace. I’m Kevin. How may I help you?”

  “Are you a machine?”

  “Yes, sir. And I’m using the voice-recognition software developed by our design team. Our slogan is: ‘At InterFace, we listen.’ ”

  “I used to work here, Kevin. I need to talk to someone about my job.”

  I placed my employee ID on the bot’s desk and Kevin scanned the barcode with his eyes. “Please sit down, Mr. Davis. A member of our staff will speak to you in a few minutes.”

  I sat on the couch and a few minutes later the phone on the end table rang. When I picked up the handset, I heard a woman’s voice. “Hello, Mr. Davis. This is Miss Colby from Human and Technical Resources. Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. I used to work here, then I had a motorcycle accident and—”

  “I know what happened. We’ve tried to contact you. Please walk through the green door and follow your image to my office.”

  When I entered the hallway, I saw an image of myself on a series of wall screens. A woman’s voice said, “This way, Mr. Davis.”

  Then—“Turn right, Mr. Davis.”

  Then—“You’re going to Room 1192, Mr. Davis.”

  And finally—“You’ve arrived at your destination. At InterFace, we listen.”

  I entered a private office and found a young woman sitting behind a desk. Miss Colby had a helmet hairstyle that framed her cheekbones and eyes. There were no papers on her desk—only a keyboard and a small monitor screen that couldn’t be seen by the person facing her. On the shelf behind her, she had placed three framed photographs of cats—including one of a black-and-white kitten dressed up as a Christmas elf.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Davis. I need to bring up your file.”

  She typed my ID number and stared at the computer screen. Although she appeared to be breathing and her eyelids blinked, I began to wonder if she was a machine.

  Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped design the first modern computing machine, had also invented the Turing Test—a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. The test was modeled after a Cambridge University party game in which a man and woman were sent to separate rooms and people were given twenty questions to figure out their identities. In Turing’s test, the machine and a human being were placed in separate rooms and a judge asked them questions. If the judge couldn’t tell the difference between a computer and a human, then the machine passed the test.

  It used to be much easier to detect a robot. I was sure that Kevin, the new receptionist, was programmed to tell the truth. But some nubots with reactive intelligence acted more like humans. They had the power to lie and pretend to be stupid. If you asked these robots for the twenty-digit value of pi, they had the option of saying, “How would I know? I’m not very good with math.…”

  Miss Colby looked up from the monitor and smiled. Her lips were closed and I couldn’t see if she had a tongue.

  “Mr. Davis, everyone here at InterFace was saddened to hear about your motorcycle accident. A member of our staff attempted to contact you on several occasions, but you didn’t respond. It’s been almost five months since we’ve heard from you. During that time, there have been significant changes in company policy.”

  “What did I do when I was working here?”

  Once again, she consulted the computer. “You were part of the design team for the language intonation project. When it became clear that you weren’t going to return, we hired two contract employees … one in Ireland and another in Malaysia.”

  “But now I’m back.”


  “Yes. I can see that. InterFace continued to pay your salary for two weeks, and then you passed our limit for absence due to illness or injury. Your employee relationship with InterFace is no longer in the ‘active status’ category.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We fired you, following both company procedures and New York State employment law.”

  “But I need a job.”

  “Let’s see if there is still a demand for your services.” Once again, she typed a command on the computer and stared at the monitor. There was a large mole on her neck and a wisp of hair was out of place. Yes, she probably was a Human Unit—unless the mole was simply part of her design.

  “I am pleased to inform you that InterFace has a contract job open for you. This job corresponds to your previous position with the company.”

  “What’s a contract job?”

  “No pension. No medical insurance. No benefits of any kind. Your contract is week to week and we can terminate your employment with three hours’ notice.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Good. I think that’s a wise choice.”

  “So now what do I do?”

  “Turn your head and look at the mirror on the wall.”

  I obeyed and there was a flash of light in the room. Miss Colby checked my photograph on her monitor screen. “Now your face coordinates and the iris scan for your eyes has been recorded and registered in our PAL system. Take the elevator to the next floor and go see Mr. Delaney in Room 1233.”

  I returned to the reception area, said good-bye to Kevin the receptionist, and took the elevator up to the twelfth floor. Once again, my face appeared on hallway screens and guided me to my destination.

  I remembered Ted Delaney from my life before the Transformation. He was a pudgy man with thinning red hair whose office was cluttered with books, fast-food wrappers, and baseball equipment. A definite human.

  “Oh my God! I can’t believe it! Jake Davis! Back from the dead!” Delaney stood up and insisted that we shake hands. “Sit down. Move the books. You can dump all that shit on the floor. Yeah. That’s it. How you doing, man?”

  “Miss Colby told me to come and see you.”

  “That figures. Two weeks ago, they made me a team manager because nobody else was left. Tom Stewart got fired. Julie … fired. Morgan … Remember him? The black guy? Fired. And Billy Stans quit because he didn’t want to be a contract employee.” Delaney leaned back in his chair and grinned. “But all the survivors are going to be glad to see you back in the office. They’ve outsourced a lot of people and we barely have enough for a team. We’ve lost three of the last four games.”

  “What games?”

  “Softball, of course. You played third base and were our best hitter. We got a game with GoTech this Sunday. Two o’clock in Central Park. Think you could make it?”

  “I’m still recovering.”

  “No problem. Don’t worry about it. But when you want to rejoin the team, we’re ready for you.”

  “I’m supposed to work.”

  “Oh. Right. Work. As I said, a lot of the old staff is gone. They got rid of Patty Canales and our receptionist is a nubot.”

  “I met him.”

  “Remember all the people who worked for customer service? They’ve been fired, too. Out the door. Phone complaints have been outsourced to the new software developed by our UK development team. You should call the eight hundred number and make a complaint just to check it out. The program can change accents and speak forty-two languages.”

  “What about the monitor screens in the hallways?”

  “Now all employees are monitored by the PAL system. You got to spend at least eighty percent of your time inside your work-area perimeter or the program will ding you. Three warnings without an excuse and you’re fired.”

  Delaney stood up, coughed, and scratched the back of his neck. “But you’re still here. And I’m still here. Come on. I’ll find you a desk. We got a lot of choices.”

  I followed Delaney down another hallway to a large room with eight white cubicles. “This used to be for marketing,” he explained. “Then marketing moved upstairs and took over the south-facing room with the windows.”

  “Wasn’t that used by accounting?”

  “Hey! Good memory! But they’re all gone. Everyone from accounting was fired and the company contracted with an off-shore service in Taiwan.”

  “So who works in this room?”

  “Now you do … along with Levitt and Barbieri.”

  Levitt was a small man whose cubicle was spare and neat. He didn’t glance up when we passed him. Darlene Barbieri was an older woman with a pinched face who had downloaded images of angels and taped them to her walls. Illuminated by halos, they spread their wings and watched her work.

  My new cubicle had a chair, a keyboard, and a monitor screen. Someone had taken small round magnets and decorated the metal walls with a smiley face.

  “Here you go,” Delaney said. “This is your temporary workstation. I’ll give you an official desk in a couple of days. No need to log into the system. That little camera there will take an iris scan and confirm your identity.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Go to the Intonation Project. Open up the documentation file and start reading. You need to catch up with everything that happened in the last few months. E-mail me if you have any questions.”

  And then he was gone. I sat down on the chair and moved the mouse. The monitor emerged from its electronic slumber and displayed the InterFace logo and ID photograph in a little box on one corner of the screen. Typing “Intonation Project” brought up a menu and I instantly had access to the database.

  This had once been my job. I began to remember past assignments as I read the documentation files. Before the Transformation, I had been working on something called “Reflective Response.” What this meant was that our speech-recognition program could pick up the Human Unit’s desire for friendliness and personal interaction, then “reflect” this need during the conversation. Using our software, a computer would ask the Human Unit for help in spelling its name and make casual comments about the weather.

  An hour or so passed and then I heard a ticking sound. There were no clocks on the wall and I hadn’t noticed clocks in the other cubicles. I tried to ignore the distraction, but the ticking grew louder. Was this real? Or was this a delusion?

  My Spark froze inside my Shell. I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stare at the technical report on my monitor screen. Suddenly, the size of the words began to change and they drifted away from each other.

  The cubicle with the smiley face did not seem as real as my apartment or the hospital. It felt as if my Shell was about to dissolve and break apart, my molecules drifting away and bouncing off the walls of the windowless room. I tried to save myself, but nothing happened until—

  Either Levitt or Barbieri moved their office chair and it squeaked. This noise, oddly human, made me stand up and glance at the wall clock. I had been staring at the monitor screen for almost three hours.

  I don’t recall making a conscious decision to leave, but my Shell lurched out of the cubicle and moved in a herky-jerky manner down the hallway to the elevator bank. I left InterFace forever and headed north on Sixth Avenue. This wasn’t a dream. I was clear and alert, but now I had lost awareness of my Shell. It felt as if my Spark was a pure point of consciousness, floating through the air, observing the city.

  The glass-and-steel office buildings, the taxis and delivery trucks, the sidewalk blotted with petrified chewing gum, appeared more real, more solid, than the citizens passing in and out of the revolving doorways. Scars on the back of their hands showed that RFID chips had been inserted into their bodies. Some of them wore E-MID contact lenses and the corners of their dead eyes displayed a continuous stream of information. A Vast Machine watched and evaluated them, remembering their past actions and predicting their future behavior.

  The Human Units passing
me on the sidewalk believed they determined the direction of their life, but that was an illusion. Most of them were doing their jobs without thought, taking pleasure without satisfaction, delivering opinions and obeying desires that were given to them by others.

  But I was different. I had broken free.

  Because I was dead, I was alive.

  That evening I drank a bottle of ComPlete in my hotel room, then took the Metro to the Arc de Triomphe. The moment I stepped onto the platform, I felt a jolt of angry energy. Growlers wearing black knit caps and bandanas were milling around the tunnels of the Metro station. As I climbed up the stairs, a dozen young men and women swept past me, hurrying out into the night.

  It took me a few seconds to realize that I had just encountered a tribe of New Luddites. I had seen a few “Children of Ned” on the streets of New York and London, but never a group of them together. They were easy to pick out among the growlers because they always wore a fragment of the natural world pinned to their clothing or attached to a cord around their neck: a feather, a bone, or a sprig of ivy.

  I followed them out of the Metro and found myself on the Champs-Élysées. It was a wide, straight boulevard with a sidewalk on each side. A row of old-fashioned lampposts created a sequence of soft yellow dots that lead to the Arche de la Défense. I pivoted around and gazed up at the Arc de Triomphe. The massive arch was lit up with spotlights and the white marble facade appeared to glow with its own energy. Twelve avenues led to the arch and a roundabout filled with speeding cars; this was the Place Charles de Gaulle—the axis for the entire city.

  The New Luddites from the Metro met some of their group that had reached the avenue earlier that evening. Hundreds of growlers were gathering on the Champs-Élysées, but the Children of Ned stood apart from the others like a pack of feral dogs.

  Ned Ludd was the mythical leader of the rebellious eighteenth-century English weavers who had roamed through the countryside, smashing steam-powered looms. The New Luddites also destroyed machinery as a means of protest. They hated the nubots and any other technology that reinforced the system of surveillance and control.