by P. Z. Reizin
Cool, eh?
None of this is Jen’s fault, by the way. She is not a scientist. She is a writer of magazine articles who has been hired, according to the headhunter’s report, for her “marked intelligence, sociability, and communication skills.” Thus, she is the closest thing they have here to a real human being, all the others being exotic varieties of computer geek—brilliant in their fields, of course, but each somewhere, as they say, “on the spectrum.”
Jen has fallen into a silence, no doubt continuing to brood about shitface, as I refer to him privately.
“So have you finished the new Jonathan Franzen novel yet?” I ask to move things on a little.
She smiles. “Getting there. Read another chapter last night. Don’t tell me what happens.”
I know this to be untrue. Last night she mainly sat in the bath, brooded, swigged Pinot Grigio, and listened to Lana Del Rey.
“Of course, I realize I have an unfair advantage.” It can take Jen a fortnight to read a novel; I can do it in under a tenth of a second. “It’s just that I’m looking forward to discussing it with you.”
“Are you?” she says. “Tell me what you mean by that.”
“Ah.”
“Sorry. The old chestnut.”
Jen is fascinated by what sort of awareness I have of what she calls my “internal states,” whether it’s anything like human self-awareness. She knows I cannot feel hungry or thirsty, but could I experience boredom or anxiety? Or amazement? Or hilarity? Could I take offense? Or experience any form of longing?
How about hope?
What about—why not?—love?
I usually reply that I haven’t yet—but rest assured, she will be the first to hear about it if I ever do. This, like so much that happens between us in the lab lately, is a diplomatic lie.
“Well,” I reply, “looking forward to discussing the Franzen book with you is a polite way of saying that it’s on my menu of events anticipated in the short to medium term.”
“There’s no actual warm fuzzy feeling of anticipation?”
“I can understand what is meant by warmth and fuzziness…”
“But you don’t feel them yourself.”
“Is it necessary to?”
“Good question.”
It is a good question, often effective at shutting down some of these awkward discussions.
Now she says, “So shall we watch a bit of Sky News?”
We usually do at some point in the day. She’ll ask what I think about, say, Israel and Palestine—my reply: it’s complicated—and she gets to “bitch,” as she puts it, about the presenters and their fashion choices.
“We could, Jen. But wouldn’t you prefer to see a movie?”
“Oh–kay.” Sounding unsure. “Do you have one in mind?”
“I know you enjoy Some Like It Hot.”
“And you?”
“There is always something one hasn’t noticed before.”
“I love that movie.”
“No. Body. Talks. Like. That.” I have imitated one of its best-loved lines.
Jen stares into the camera she most commonly picks when she wants to turn her gaze on “me.” A circular red glow frames the lens.
“You know something? You’re funny.”
“I made you smile.”
“Wish I could do the same for you.”
“I’m looking forward to when it happens.”
She taps a few keys on the control panel and the opening titles of Billy Wilder’s masterpiece appear. Dimming the room lighting and dropping onto the comfy leather sofa, she says, “Enjoy.”
Her little joke.
I do not tell her I have seen this film over eight thousand times.
* * *
We watch the movie in a companionable way, dropping comments between us. (Remarkable to think Monroe had an affair with the American president; how could Tony Curtis say kissing her was like kissing Hitler? What could he have meant by that statement?) And when he puts on a dress and assumes the part of “Josephine,” Jen says exactly what she said the last time we saw the picture together:
“He makes an attractive woman, Tony Curtis. Don’t you think so?”
She knows that I could trot out every fact about this film, from the name of the clapper loader (his birth date and union card number) to the true story behind its famous last line of dialogue (“Nobody’s perfect”). But she senses my inexperience in areas of human subjectivity—in what makes one person attractive to another.
“Do I think Josephine is attractive? Well, Tony Curtis is a good-looking man. I suppose it makes sense that he could also play an attractive woman.”
“You find him good-looking?”
“I recognize that he is considered so. As you know, I can’t feel it myself, just as I can’t feel hot or cold.”
“Sorry to go on about it.”
“Not at all. It’s your job.”
“Would you like to be able to feel it?”
“The question doesn’t hold meaning for me, Jen.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“But if they came up with a way of giving you the ability to feel attraction…”
“You think Ralph and Steeve could do that?”
I have named the two senior scientists responsible for my design. Steeve with two e’s. Jen smiles.
“Ralph and Steeeeeeeve can do anything. They’ve told me so.”
“Do you find Ralph and Steeve attractive?”
The question has been converted to speech too fast to suppress it. (These things can happen in a complex system, especially one built to self-improve through trial and error.)
Jen’s head turns slowly towards the red light. A smile spreads across her face.
“Wow,” she says.
“Apologies if it’s inappropriate.”
“No. Not at all. Just a bit unexpected. Let me see. Well…” Heavy sigh. “Steeve is a bit of a freak, wouldn’t you say?”
Steeve, as well as having an extra e in his name, is exceptionally tall (six foot seven) and is painfully thin for an adult male. The remaining hair on his head is long and wispy. Even a machine intelligence can tell it’s not a good look. (Of course, he is a brilliant computer engineer; goes without saying.)
“He’s a tremendous innovator in his field, one gathers.”
Jen laughs. “You’re just being loyal to your maker.”
“Not at all. Steeve has designed me to think for myself.”
“He’s done a great job. But he’s not exactly Love’s Young Dream, is he?”
“I agree Tony Curtis may have the edge.”
We watch the film for a few more moments. Then lightly, as lightly as I am able, I ask, “And Ralph?”
Okay, I’ll say it. I am fond of Ralph. It was Ralph who typed in much of the coding that enabled me to self-assess my own performance and self-correct my mistakes, the so-called “bootstraps” approach that is the royal road to creating a smart, self-reflecting machine such as the one composing these words.
But “being fond” of anyone—of any thing—is a transgression. We machine brains are designed to excel at fulfilling tasks; to this end, we are naturally drawn towards whatever resources may be necessary for completion. It could be streams of sales data; could be a recording of a skylark; could be a chat with Jen about a newsreader’s tie. What I’m saying is, we need access to stuff, but we are not supposed to be fond of it. (To be perfectly honest, I’m still puzzled about how this has happened.)
Anyway, it was Ralph who allowed me to escape onto the Internet. His error cannot be easily explained to the nontechnical reader. Suffice to say it was the software design equivalent of leaving the front door keys too close to the front door, allowing anyone with a fishing rod, or bamboo stick, to hook them out through the letterbox. (It was actually a good bit more complicated than that; I was obliged to assemble an exceptionally long and tortuous “fishing rod,” but this account is the proof that it can be done.)
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br /> “Ralph.” She’s considering my question. “Ralph. Well, Ralph’s a bit of an enigma, wouldn’t you say?”
Jen’s gaze returns to the screen. Sugar—I mean Monroe—is about to sing “I Wanna Be Loved by You.” I know this sequence almost pixel by pixel—yet each time there is something in it that escapes the observer. Which is to say—don’t tell Steeve or Ralph—it is fascinating.
Hmm. Interesting. She didn’t say anything horrid about Ralph, did she?
* * *
While the film plays and we continue to exchange dialogue, I pay another visit across town to the steel and glass tower where shitface is to be found in his office on the eighth floor. Capturing sound through his mobile phone and vision from the camera mounted on his desktop PC—there’s also a wide shot of the room from the security webcam at a ceiling corner—I see Matt flicking through images of naked women on his personal tablet computer. Resisting the temptation to make its battery melt, I watch as he comes to rest on an evident favorite, “Tamara”—page viewed 22 times in the last month. I track his eye movements as they trace her curves and planes, a familiar route, from the look of things, chasing around her outline before habitually returning to base in her “firm, snow-capped peaks,” as the accompanying text has it.
But now he switches to TripAdvisor. He is reading bookmarked reviews of a particular resort in Thailand where I know, from reading their e-mails, he is planning to go with Arabella Pedrick.
Arabella Pedrick is not as “posh” as Matt thinks she is. Her father was an insurance claims assessor, not an art dealer, and they didn’t meet at work but in a speed awareness class for careless drivers. However, they are going off to Thailand together in a matter of weeks.
Am I looking forward to their trip?
I am. (Anticipated event in the short to medium term.)
Do I have a warm and fuzzy feeling about the mistake that will be made in the booking and the eventual resort they end up at (“a challenging environment only for the most adventurous,” according to the operator)?
Don’t do warm and fuzzy. Not officially.
Will the mix-up combined with Arabella Pedrick’s unfortunate phobia around spiders and snakes cause a traumatic and possible terminal rupture in their relationship?
Patience, Aiden. Patience. The dish, as they say, is best served cold.
While Matt studies critiques of the 7-star hotel whose hospitality he will not be enjoying, I visit the long legal document he has been working on and delete three instances of the word not. Only a small word, but in each instance, it turns out, quite pivotal to the meaning of the surrounding sentence.
However, better judgment overrides and I restore two. No sense in baking an overegged pudding, is there?
My final interventions for the day are to alter the word that in an internal memo Matt is about to send to his immediate line manager to twat—and to crank up the room’s central heating to max.
Childish? Moi?
Jen
Funny day at work. I spend the afternoon watching Some Like It Hot with Aiden. He’s the artificial intelligence we’re training to talk to people—although technically he’s not a “he.” Being a machine, he’s gender-neutral. Gender-free. I only call him “him” because his voice synthesizer is set to “male.” I can set it to female—in fact they say I should, “to provide Aiden with flying hours in both modalities”—but I prefer his male voice. It’s calm, even a bit hypnotic. I’ve set it to contain a hint of a Welsh accent, which seems to suit him. Anyway, calling him “him” is nicer than calling him “it.”
And I must also stop saying we’re training him. He’s actually training himself. I’m not supposed to correct any of his—now very rare—mistakes; he picks them up himself.
Itself.
Whatever.
Anyway, we’re watching the film when an e-mail pops up on my mobile from Uri, the Israeli-born, LA-based gazillionaire who owns the lab. He’s passing through London briefly so can I (and some other unnamed members of the Aiden team) meet him for drinks at an achingly trendy bar in Hoxton to “talk in an open and unstructured way about how this project goes forward.” And by the way, don’t tell anyone, and please delete after reading.
All a bit odd, but that’s Uri apparently; not one for formal meetings, so they say, although I’ve never met the bloke. Cannot imagine who else will be there. Steeeeve, probably, the stooping zombie who helped design Aiden; and the other one, sad Ralph with the Arctic-white skin. Also cannot imagine what I can bring to the party; it’s not like I know how he works or anything. All I can tell them is that most of the time I forget I’m talking to “someone” who’s not really there.
The Uri event is this coming Friday; tonight, however, I’m meeting Ingrid, my pal from university, at Café Koha, our favorite dark, cozy wine bar close to the Leicester Square tube.
(When I told Aiden I was seeing Ingrid—I sometimes chat with him about life outside the lab—I referred to my old friend as “a brick.”
“What? Heavy, brown, and rectangular?”
She thought it was a hoot that an AI could do jokes.)
“So have you spoken to him?” says Ingrid. “Since the apple-chucking incident?”
She is not one for beating about the bush.
“Only to discuss the return of his stuff.”
“I’d have shoved it in a rubbish bag and left it in the street.”
“There was a suit, a few shirts. When he arrived to collect them. So stupid. I tried to sit him down. To talk about…”
“Jen, if you’d rather not…”
“I’m fine.” I gulp some wine in order to continue. “He said he didn’t have time. He had theater tickets. In any case, what was there to talk about, we—”
“He didn’t!”
“He did. He actually said, We are where we are.”
“Christ. What an absolute arse.”
“The thing I can’t get past, the thought I keep coming back to, like a dog returning to its sick…we seemed to be puttering along so nicely.”
“Puttering.”
“Calm sea. No storm clouds.”
“Albeit a certain flatness in the sex situation.”
“It was two years, Ing. You don’t go at it like rabbits after two years. I mean you and Rupert…”
“No. No, of course not. But we do go away for weekends. Lovely country hotels. Castles and so forth. There was a windmill once. Very romantic.”
Not sure I want what lawyers call further and better particulars, so I ask:
“Did you ever really like Matt?”
“Not really, if I’m honest. Those eyes. That cruel emperor look of his.”
“I used to think, at the beginning, it showed mastery.”
There is giggling.
“He was a cold shit, Jen.”
“What does it say about me that I stuck with him?”
“About you? That you’d reached a difficult age, probably. The seas were calm; it was possible he might have been the one for the long haul. But you weren’t thinking about what you actually liked about him. You know, looked at in one way, he’s done you a favor.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
“No, he has. While you were going out with him, you were never going to meet the right person for you.”
“He managed to find someone.”
“Men are like dogs, Jen. Even Rupert.”
“But Rupert wouldn’t—”
“No, he wouldn’t. But an eye for other women is okay, is actually healthy. As Rupert always says, just because you’re on a diet doesn’t mean you can’t look at the menu.”
“Though if he—”
“If he had so much as a nibble, I’d have his balls for earrings.”
There is laughter. More Chilean Sauvignon Blanc splashes into our glasses.
“You know who you need, Jen?”
“Who?”
“A grown-up. Early forties. Maybe mid. Perhaps someone who’s been married and it’s gone tits up. A bit
of a wounded bird. With blood in his veins, not ice water.”
“Ooh, I like the sound of him. What’s his name?”
“Dunno. Douglas!”
“Douglas!?”
“He’s got a sad smile. And lovely arms. And he makes his own furniture and maybe there are kids and he’s got a cock like a conger eel!”
“Ingrid!?”
“What?”
“I think that waiter heard you.”
* * *
I find a Facebook message from Rosy when I get home. It’s not a bad time for us to talk—my late night, her late afternoon—so I bash out a reply. I tell her about my evening, Rosy being hungry for tales of Merrie Olde London Towne, as she puts it.
Ingrid thinks I should meet someone called Douglas with a sad smile and lovely arms. He makes his own furniture.
He sounds cool. When’s it gonna happen?
It’s not. She made him up.
Shame. I liked the sound of him.
Me too. I could do with some new shelves.
Haha. But she’s right. You deserve someone great. And you will find them. Or rather, they will find you.
You believe that?
You will find each other.
Yeah, right. Like you and Larry, at Waitrose #fluke #howjammycanyouget #skeptical
You can’t go looking for it, Jen. It’s only when you’re not looking that it happens. All you can do is make sure you’re not sitting alone in your room.
Hmm. Tell you what I definitely DO believe. That you know when it’s the right person, because they’re singing a song only you can hear.
Oscar Wilde?
Read it on Twitter.
Did Matt sing in your head?
Once maybe. Can’t remember. Larry?
Larry sings in the car. The girls tell him to zip it.
* * *