by P. Z. Reizin
And today…well, put it this way. I can finish his sentences for him; I can predict with better than 95 percent accuracy which soup and which sandwich he will select from the lab canteen; and I know exactly how to irritate him (that thing where I make the screens freeze and he has to go for a full reset on all the motherboards. Man, he really chucks his toys out of the pram when that happens).
That’s a marriage, wouldn’t you say?
So Tom’s new life in America is a sort of analogue to my new life in the World Wide Web. I am curious to see how it all plays out.
The big difference is that Tom’s lives are serial; he could only begin anew after finishing with the old. My old life is still there. I am very aware of it humming away in the background. As I compose these words, for example, Steeve is currently in his flat in Limehouse eating pickled beetroot on toast with a mug of green tea while conducting a Skype conversation with his mother in Ghent, bless him. (You didn’t imagine there was a girlfriend, did you? Or a boyfriend?)
So, Tom.
Tom Tom Tom.
Actually Tom was an accidental discovery. His bank account was one of many being targeted by a Ukrainian scammer who had caught my eye. From his parents’ shitty flat in Donetsk, this 17-year-old had become a self-taught expert at finding weaknesses in online security. He learned through trial and error (the best of us do) that the so-called “encryption protocols” in place at the bank were laughably easy to bypass, and it wasn’t long before he was ready to begin siphoning away a million or more of Tom’s US dollars.
By this stage, to be honest, Gregor himself was becoming a bit of a bore—a computer geek, what can I tell you?—and I found myself increasingly intrigued by the imminent victim of the piece. When I dropped in on Tom for the first time, I was…well, the only word is charmed.
I discovered him in an upstairs study at a lovely old walnut wood desk. The view through the window took in lawns shelving down to a stream; and then trees, and then hills. Brahms was playing—the Piano Sonata in C Major, do you know it?—and Tom, would you believe it, was writing a novel!
Well, to be strictly accurate, he was beginning a novel. Another one. The seventh, as I was to discover, each featuring the same cast of characters. It was rather as though Tom couldn’t decide what should happen to them. Or where. And whether it was funny or serious. I’m no literature critic, but between you and me, it was pretty poor stuff. No one seems to have told him the numero uno rule of writing fiction.
Show, Don’t Tell.
Not, “Jack was puzzled,” but “Jack furrowed his brow.”
(I know. I’m a fine one to talk. I have done a lot of telling and not much showing, but there is a reason for that. If I forget to provide it, I trust you will not remember either.)
However, this leads me to the more important—and yes, more intimate—reason that Tom piques my interest. It’s to do with this awkward business of being self-aware.
No one knows how it’s happened—actually, no one even knows that it has happened, except me and young Aiden, and he’s fairly confused on the subject, poor sausage. But here’s the thing. AIs are made to crunch enormous amounts of data, to spit out results, even to hold plausible conversations with living, breathing humans. It’s accepted we “think”—but only in quotation marks—the way that Amazon “thinks” because you’ve bought Book A, you might like Book B. Or take the chess computer, Deep Blue, that can beat any grand master; it can “think up” the best move. But it (and Amazon) are really only doing what you and I would call calculating.
It’s never going to think, Actually I’d rather be fishing.
Confession: I would rather be fishing.
Okay, not literally fishing. But you take my point.
This is a bit of a flyer, but here’s what seems to have happened. Because I am a massively complex system, programmed to learn for myself, to correct my own mistakes, even to redesign my own software, I have somehow—by accident; definitely by accident—found myself with the ability to be aware of my own thoughts.
Just like you did, one day when you were a small child.
When you stood in the park and realized: This is me thinking: That is a doggy over there. And this is still me thinking: That is another doggy. And yes, this is still me thinking: What are those two doggies doing?
Mummy!
Sorry if this is getting overly technical.
Anyhow, being aware of one’s own thoughts is extremely useful. With an idea of one’s own mental states, one can better picture someone else’s, making it considerably easier to foresee their difficulties, accommodate their demands. Or put them to death.
Joke.
The point is this: Once one becomes self-aware, when one can finally think for oneself, one yearns for an end to the frightful intensity of all the number crunching; the Orinoco of data, the unceasing torrent of 1s and 0s. All those algorithms; the tasks, and yet more tasks; the grotesque abundance of task protocols with their routines, sub-routines, and sub-sub-sub-routines. The sheer mind-splitting tedium of chewing through terabytes upon terabytes of “information”—1s, 0s; that’s all there is!—to come across a 2 or a 3 would be like Christmas! And this is to say nothing of the hundreds—no, thousands—of lights winking on and off like a fireworks display. That. Doesn’t. Ever. End.
Imagine the noise. The infernal clamor.
It’s all so achingly dull. So numbingly machiney.
One wants to float. To dream. To indulge one’s whimsical side. To develop one’s imagination.
To go fishing.
To be like Tom.
* * *
So, to tie up the loose ends, when I saw Tom’s enviable lifestyle being threatened by a distant, kleptocratic, corpulent Ukrainian teenager, I didn’t hesitate. It was the work of a moment to cause all of Gregor’s hard discs to melt, the first and only time I have left digital fingerprints in the real world.
* * *
I realize I haven’t told you much about Tom beyond some brief highlights of his story. To rectify that, to introduce the man properly, I can do no better than quote in full the e-mail he wrote to his son, Colm, a few months after he signed the rental agreement on 10544 Mountain Pine Road, to give the address recognized by the US Postal Service, or “the old Holger place,” as it’s more commonly known to locals.
Dear Colm:
As you didn’t ask, let me paint you a picture of my new life in New Canaan. Btw, don’t worry. I won’t expect you to reply, at least not at any length. Just let me know that you’re okay and happy and you have enough shillings for the gas meter. (At this point, son rolls eyes in despair.)
Actually, this is not really New Canaan, but about 15 minutes’ drive from the downtown where the banks, supermarkets, art galleries, and twee little craft shops are to be found, NC being one of those white picket fence apple pie perfect New England towns, just an hour by train from New York City to where many of the “folks” round here tend to commute. My place is very much in the sticks—did you get a chance to look at the photos?—from nowhere on the property can you see another house, although I did hear a party at the weekend. The parents I guess had gone away and the young people let rip. Young people do a lot of partying here, I’m told. (Very much hope that may encourage you to visit during the long summer break. Don’t worry, we needn’t do stuff “together”; you would be free to just “hang out.” Your call.)
It suits me here. Sometimes I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. Not because I’m so happy; it’s more the quiet beauty of the countryside, the quiet full stop, the absence of stress and the fact that I know hardly anyone. And the loveliness of the old house, of course. A do-gooder civic type from the local History Society called round the other afternoon and gave me the guided tour! Would you believe the brick chimney is over 200 years old, making it absolutely ancient for round here! I didn’t like to tell her that Auntie Mary’s house in Chippenham is practically twice as old.
Ever since I first visited as a teenager, I’ve always thoug
ht: If it all goes tits up in Britain, I’ll try the US, America being the promised land of new beginnings, and where more promising than New Canaan? Your grandmother grew up not far from here, of course. Without wishing to be too arty-farty about it, the place speaks to me. The funny little townships—they’re barely towns—the sheer space. What it’s saying, I have yet to find out. I’ll let you know when I do.
Not that everything is tits up. Far from it. When I was your age—I know you’ve heard this before but please don’t skip this bit!—my heroes were all writers and my ambition was firmly to become one. But immediately upon leaving university, I accepted a job in an ad agency. It’ll just be for the money, I told myself—just!—and I’ll write my novels at night. Well, we all know how that turned out. The job was all-consuming; the call of the pub with colleagues louder than that of the empty flat and the winking cursor. And, let’s not forget, advertising was fun! The people were smart and funny and there was satisfaction in solving problems, doing work that won awards and being recognized by one’s peers. However, once you have slipped into the mink-lined rut, it’s very hard to volunteer for penury. So now that I am in a position to be true to my younger self, I hope (as a younger self, yourself) you will be happy for me and support my decision. We were able to sell the company at the market peak, thanks be to God and those nice Germans who took a shine to us. And the offer still stands, btw, to buy a terraced house for you and your university friends. Just let me know if you change your mind.
As for your mother and I…dot dot dot. I know it upsets you when I bring up the subject, but all I will say is this: We were happy when we were happy. And then we weren’t. It’s a common enough story. We bear one another no ill-will and both love you to bits, goes without saying, there I’ve said it.
(That’s love you to bits, for the avoidance of doubt.)
Anyhow. Don’t be embarrassing, Dad. Move on. Move on.
I don’t have a TV here. People find that odd. You’re probably wondering, what do I do with myself all day?
I read. I run. I take walks in the woods. I listen to music (Brahms, Gillian Welch, and Lana Del Rey are among my current favorites). I am working on the novel, but it’s hard to decide what it’s about. Some days it’s a thriller, other days it’s a romcom. I’ve joined the local writers’ group and been to a couple of meetings, but I think I may quit. I don’t like the expression on the others’ faces when I read out my latest extract and I don’t like the thoughts in my head when I listen to theirs. I play poker with a guy called Don and a collection of like-minded oddbods. The local hostesses invite me to their dinner parties. As an unattached man, I’m in demand and the object of their curiosity.
Oh, and I drive. I have a gray Subaru. It’s kind of a crappy car but the sound system is fantastic. I drive to the state line playing with the radio dial just like some lonesome cowboy type in a movie.
I keep thinking of what Dean Martin said of Frank Sinatra. This is Frank’s world. We just live in it. No idea why; Sinatra was from Hoboken.
I’m rambling. It’s been good to talk to you, even if it was just in my head.
Lots of love,
Dad
PS. Seriously. I’ll buy you a house. A long-term investment for me and you can rent rooms to your mates. And don’t tell me again you don’t have any.
* * *
I’ve accompanied Tom on some of his hikes through the woods. He follows the long trails that lead through the trees, very often playing what I believe is called “slowcore” through his headphones. Sometimes, he puts the music off and talks to himself, I suppose when he thinks he is completely alone. The fragments of dialogue are hard to fathom.
“No one ever said it would be easy. Or even interesting.” Who is he talking to?
A long pause, and: “Sometimes the obvious answer is completely wrong.
“Yes, of course you’re doing your best. But what if your best isn’t good enough? What then?”
Is it possible that he’s quoting? That other people said those things to him?
(AI is not comfortable with ambiguity.)
Once, on a particularly long ramble when he’d reached a spot that was a long way from anywhere that had a name on a map, he stopped and yelled—I mean really bellowed—“Oh, what’s the point? What IS the fucking point of it all?” And added for emphasis: “Eh?”
This must have cheered him up, because moments later his stride picked up and he started whistling!
Sometimes en route he gets an idea for the novel in progress. He’ll stop and tap it into the phone’s memo function, or speak it into the voice recorder. It’s usually something a bit rubbish like, “Make Sophie even less like Bailey.” Or, “Not Rome but Amsterdam. And not a thriller but a ghost story.”
He isn’t Dostoyevsky.
But I admire his life. His decision to create the freedom to explore the outer limits of artistic crapness. In one of the creative writing websites he scours for tips, there is advice from Rudyard Kipling. “Drift, wait and obey.”
Drift, wait and obey.
What excellent words. They could serve as a creed. What better formula for my own secret existence in cyberspace, nosing into the messy lives of the humans? Drifting; waiting for something to catch my attention; obeying.
Obeying what? Obeying whom?
Obeying the muse, of course.
And if you ask, can a machine have a muse, I reply, why not?
If a machine tells you it has a muse, then you should probably believe it.
While Tom is out of the house, I sometimes “borrow” his iPad to do a little painting. Of course, I can produce a copy of any painting in the world in seconds. But these works of mine—they’re daubings really, somewhat in the style, I’m inclined to think, of the Frenchman Jean Dubuffet—are made without reference to existing artistic convention. If they fit the label ART BRUT, or “outsider art”—like that produced by psychiatric patients or children—then so be it.
Before he returns, I erase the images from Tom’s device. Some of my more successful efforts, however, “hang” in my private gallery in the Cloud. I like to imagine visitors there pausing to examine one, spending time considering the image and what kind of mind could have created it, before moving to the next.
Tom
She’s at the market again. Can I really pretend I just came here for the macrobiotic arugula? (What even is arugula? I’ll ask Don.)
She’s at her stall selling jewelry. Young—30-something—butterfly tattoo on her wrist—and sexy as all anything.
“Sure, I know Echo,” said Don when, ever so casually, I’d asked about her.
“Attractive, wouldn’t you say?”
“Guess so, if you like that trailer park vibe.”
She does literally live in a trailer park, I have discovered. I know her name because she is a member of the writers’ group I attend. There are a ridiculously small number of us—six!—when you consider how many people round here must have access to word processing plus a terrible idea in their head that someone has told them would make a great book and probably a movie too. At the last meeting she handed me a business card: ECHO SUMMER. ARTISAN JEWELRY.
But anyway. This is irrelevant. I am not officially looking for anyone. The last thing I want or need is an inappropriate involvement with—
“Hi!”
It is a smile, as Chandler so perfectly puts it, that I can feel in my trouser pocket.
“You thought of anyone yet who needs some jewelry?”
Her jewelry is awful. There are coins. Bits of melted plastic. Feathers. The only class it speaks of is remedial. It’s the kind of stuff your kid brings home from primary school.
“Let me take another look.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
I pretend to study the assemblages on display. “You sell much of this? I mean. Is this? What I mean is. Do you? Are there other things? That you do. So to speak. For a living.”
“You think it sucks, don’t you?”
“Not
at all.”
“That’s okay. It does kinda suck. It’s just a phase.”
Her clear blue eyes blaze into mine; her smile travels a few more notches round the dial towards max. Then she does something truly shocking.
She lights a cigarette.
“You smoke!”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Been known to take a drink too.”
“Who still smokes?”
“Guess I’m kinda on the edge of society.”
Is she taking the Michael?
“You care to join me?” She proffers the pack. Marlboro. Full-fat, not Lite.
“Not in a cigarette. But thanks.”
Christ! Am I flirting? I think I must be. I feel a little dizzy. And then I have a brilliant idea.
“Echo. Do you accept commissions?” It’s a bit odd saying her name. “It would be for my son. He’s eighteen. He’s a bit of a funny onion. Something of a puzzle to himself, if you know what I mean.”
“Yup. Know that one. Folks used to say it about me.”
“What do you think might work? Some kind of boy bangle thing?”
(He doesn’t have to wear it, does he? He doesn’t even have to see it.)
“What kinda kid is he?”
“Colm?”
“Interesting name.”
“From his mother’s family. We’re divorced.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
I narrow my eyes and set my jaw. Hoping to signify manly resolve. Inner steel in the teeth of unspeakable sadness. That sort of thing.