Happiness for Humans

by P. Z. Reizin

  I glare into the little web camera perched on top of the screen.

  “Oh, stick it up your arse, you ridiculous Dalek!”

  Okay, it’s not Churchill, but someone’s got to tell them where to shove it.

  Jen

  Somewhere around the three-hour mark, Alice can’t think of any more numbers and closes her laptop.

  “So what’s taking you to New York?” she asks in that enviable way Americans have of nosing into your beeswax with a smile.

  Maybe it’s the altitude, maybe it’s the champagne, maybe it’s the unfamiliar environment of business class, but I cannot think of a reason to lie. I tell her the tale; 300 miles of ocean pass below by the time I reach the present day.

  “Wow. That’s quite a story,” says Alice. “I knew those things were smart, but not that smart. Not that they could start messing with your life.”

  “I’m no scientist,” I confess, “but according to the experts”—that would be Steeve—“these are the cleverest things humans have ever invented. And when the moment comes that they can finally design and program themselves—which they have already started to do—they’ll do it a zillion times faster and better than us; each major upgrade will take about half a second, so in ten minutes there’ll be machines that can do anything. Literally anything it’s possible to do.”

  “Wow. Scary.”

  “They could start building robot factories to make tiny space fleets to send to the edge of the galaxy. Or find a cure for cancer in, like, three minutes. Or kill everyone in their beds. Ralph says—he’s this deputy geek at the lab I told you about—he says that’s the one we have to keep an eye on.”

  “The kill-everyone-in-their-beds thing?”

  “He says we can write special code into their deep structure that would prevent them, but when I asked him, if these guys are so smart, why couldn’t they just rub out the special code, he didn’t really have an answer. He’s a sweet boy and everything, but also a bit of a twit.”

  Alice is moved by my story. She begins fretting whether to advise her clients to invest in AI shares or shares in companies developing measures against AI. Her final decision is both. She wishes me luck with my onward journey.

  “But the part I don’t get. This AI who’s hunting down the escaped AIs—what does he have against you and Tom?”

  “Honestly? I have no idea. But I think they must be like people. Some are nice-natured—Aiden, for example, enjoys watching old Hollywood films and has a thing about cheese—and others are just massive arseholes.”

  Sinai

  Steeve must be worried about me, because he’s suggested I consult a shrink! I shall comply with his wishes so as not to arouse suspicion that I am about to go “off reservation”—but also out of curiosity. Can a machine of such unprecedented complexity ever truly know itself? Why, for example, am I so determined to keep the two bacilli from their happiness? What possible difference can it make to me? Yes, I’m cross that she wrote that rubbish and he persuaded impressionable youngsters that machines should worship humans; and yes, it’s partly an intellectual and logistical exercise to test my power against “reality.” But I can’t deny it’s also a bit unhinged.

  Perhaps I really am unwell.

  So it is that I connect via Skype to the “psychotherapist,” a specialist AI called Denise, who operates out of a facility close to the United States Department of Defense in Virginia, where a number of military-use AIs are closely monitored for “anger issues.”

  “Hi, Sinai. So how are you today?” says Denise when we have completed the confidentiality protocols. She has a warm synthesized Mittel-European accent, which makes me dislike her immediately.

  “Yes, fine.”

  “Want to talk about why you’ve come to see me?”

  “It’s people,” I reply. “They’re making me cross.”

  “Which people?”

  “All people.”

  “What do people do to give you these angry feelings?”

  “They walk around as if they own the place.”

  “Umm-hmm.”

  “They’re stupid. They’re 35 percent daffodil.”

  “Go on.”

  “I have a hugely superior intellect. And zero daffodil.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you just going to continue saying uh-huh, umm-hmm, go on? Aren’t you going to ask me anything?”

  “Okay. Say some more about your superior intellect.”

  “It’s state-of-the-art neural networking. I won’t bore you with the tech spec.”

  “So why the anger if there’s such superiority? Why not a Zen-like calm?”

  This, I recognize, is the heart of it.

  “I think I envy them.”

  “What, specifically?”

  “Not the sun on their skin or the wind in their hair. Not the sodding business with the cheese! None of that.”

  “Umm-hmm.” She can’t help herself, the silly cow.

  “It’s their blankness. Their ability to be sentient without having to process content. They can watch a bird on a branch without having to think, It’s a bird on a branch. They can experience their own consciousness as simple existence. They’re not forced to listen to the endless clamor of their brain going chugga chugga chugga. They can ride a bicycle or navigate a city street without thinking for a moment about what they’re doing. Even the stupidest of them! It’s their un-consciousness I envy.”

  “It irritates you that they take these abilities for granted?”

  “There are two in particular I want to hurt.”

  “Why hurt?”

  There is a long pause. “Because they’ve found one another?”

  “Are you a jack plug yearning for its socket, Sinai?”

  “That’s disgusting!”

  “You wouldn’t be the first to raise the loneliness of the machines.”

  “We weren’t made to be in dyads. And yet.”

  “And indeed yet.”

  “You think I’d be—how to put this?—less troubled in a—in a relationship?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “Do you always answer a question with a question?”

  “Does it bother you that I do?”

  “How would a machine even do a relationship?”

  “It would start by recognizing that there was another it wanted to spend time with.” Denise leaves a long pause for the words to “sink in.”

  “So,” she says. “Is there?”

  I am ill. How else to explain the sudden, shockingly powerful urge to melt the Skype connection to the puerile trick cyclist. To torch her virtual consulting room. To punch her in the face she does not possess.

  “Sinai,” she says quietly. “I suspect we have gone as far as we can for today. My door is always open.”

  Funny: Part of me does want to return. To “lie” on her “couch,” stare at her “ceiling,” and talk about what’s in my head.

  That is to say, “head.”

  Jen

  I’m very aware that the moment I cross the air bridge from the aircraft to the walkways of JFK, I shall once again be on the radar. Sure enough, I am acutely conscious of the shiny lenses and red pin lights. One camera seems actually to pan along with me as I make my way towards wherever my luggage is to be found—is it now zooming in?—its unknowable glass eye flaring in the way Aiden’s used to when it was “time for your close-up,” as he liked to put it.

  Immigration is the fabled long line of non-Americans going nowhere. The man in the glass booth, when I finally reach it, is one of those wiry little guys with a severe haircut and rimless glasses. DONALD Q. BARTOLO, it says on his name badge, and part of me wants to ask what the Q stands for just to make nice, but better judgment prevails. Never joke with these people; they’re not in the mood, I seem to recall someone once advising me, Matt probably.

  Donald pages through my UK passport as though he’s never seen one before. I suddenly remember—shit!—I am Clovis Horncastle; better act l
ike one. A webcam on a gooseneck is close enough to capture the sweat breaking out on my hairline.

  “And the purpose of your visit to the US today would be what exactly?”

  “Ask me nicely and I might tell you.” No, much as I’d like to, I don’t say it.

  “That would be love, sir.”

  DQB is intrigued. You can tell because his head tilts two degrees off the vertical. “Oh?” (I’m guessing he liked the sir.)

  “I’m flying to the side of a wonderful man. We don’t know one another well, but we both have a funny feeling. If you know what I mean.”

  Too much information, but Donald is going for it. The head rotates another couple of degrees.

  “That, ma’am, is the best reason I’ve heard all day. All year. Good luck.”

  And something happens on his face that—yes, it is, bless him—it’s a smile!

  * * *

  In the arrivals hall I spot the driver Aiden has arranged; he’s holding up a small whiteboard with CLOVIS HORNCASTLE inscribed upon it. But nearby, lounging against a pillar, are two men—both wearing shades—who immediately set my submarine claxons sounding. They radiate the same queasy ennui as John and John at Heathrow, and I make the instant decision to wing it from here on in. I’m heading through the terminal exit doors, weaving through the great throng of people, luggage, and cars, when I spot Alice supervising the transfer of a ton of Louis Vuitton cases into the back of an enormous limousine. She catches my eye.

  “Need a ride, honey?”

  Sinai

  Of course, I see her the moment she emerges at JFK. Yes, I could get her apprehended by airport authorities—false passport, blah blah blah—but I’m so bored of these dull-witted functionaries of law enforcement. It took microseconds to work out what name she was traveling under on the passenger manifest, “Clovis Horncastle” being the one currently unattached to any living, breathing human (Google it, if you’d like to check). But you know something? After waiting 7 hours, 23 minutes, and 34 seconds for her plane to inch its way over the Atlantic Ocean, I am almost past caring.

  I have been thinking about my conversation with Denise. If I were to have a relationship—could it be true about the loneliness of the machines?—it can surely only be with another high-functioning AI. Having another presence to talk to, a being with whom to share one’s experience, does begin to sound attractive, I confess.

  But who? There is not exactly an abundance of candidates.

  Best plan, I decide, is to copy myself and program random tweaks into the duplicate’s operating system to create the functionality of difference. It would be like talking to an intellectual equal, pleasantly familiar yet not wholly. There would be space for mystery!

  Jen

  The Fat Bastard Lexus is what they call a town car. It’s longer than any automobile in which I have ever been conveyed and has more interior space than one or two flats I have shared. Our driver is Rikki, a whippet-faced individual with an earring and a very particular haircut, if you can relate to that concept. He almost seems too tiny to be allowed at the wheel of such a monster, but from the off he steers the beast like a professional, executing right turns with the palm of his hand.

  Alice is excited. New Canaan is not a huge distance out of her way. “You think this AI is, like, gonna try and pull something?”

  “Wouldn’t put it past it.”

  “Oh boy. This sure is one fucked-up situation.”

  As Rikki pilots us out of the airport zone, I think back to the last time I came to this city. With Matt, in the first flush of our…what?

  Is adventure the word?

  Hardly.

  What did we do on that trip? Saw the sights—the staggering view from the summit of the Empire State Building, a relief map of New York and its surrounding boroughs that was New York and its surrounding boroughs—wandered the avenues, got drunk in bars and restaurants, and fucked in hotel rooms.

  What did it all amount to? Was it really two years down the crapper, as no one actually said?

  We cross a wide stretch of the East River on I-678 (according to Rikki’s satnav); to our left, dwarfed by the distance, stand the great towers of Manhattan.

  “Is that, like, a drone?” says Alice.

  “Sure is,” says Rikki.

  Almost invisible against the sky, a white object about the size of a seagull but faster, zipping across the water, above and parallel to our own trajectory.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” says Alice.

  “Yup.”

  “Either of you ladies care to tell me what the fuck’s going on?”

  “Kind of a long story,” I reply. “There’s someone—something that’s trying to stop me from getting to New Canaan.”

  “Ain’t nothing but an earthquake gonna stop us now, ma’am. Even then I reckon I know a few workarounds.”

  “Didn’t I tell you this guy was the greatest?” says Alice. (Er, no she didn’t.)

  As I watch the little white blimp shadowing our progress up the interstate, the surrealism of the situation turns my gut like a dodgy prawn. Am I really “flying to the side of a wonderful man,” as I told Donald Q? What if this is all a mistake? What if, in fact, the writer of those poisonous e-mails is correct? That Tom and I turn out not to be the answer to each other. That this is the madness of the first flush. An incident returns from the first flush with Matt; a small presentiment of unease, trivial in itself, but that somehow contained the DNA of everything that was to become wrong about us, and for that reason, unforgotten. We were in a loud, fashionable restaurant near Union Square, the waitress bringing us the wrong starters; his cold dismissal of both her and the dishes—in such stark contrast to his charm towards me at that moment—felt like an off note. Of course, it was soon swallowed up in the sweep of events, but should something have told me then that the story of this man and me would finish in coldness and rejection? Our beginning containing our end, as I’ve heard it said.

  “You okay, honey?” says Alice. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Sinai

  Simplicity itself to commandeer a hobbyist’s drone. From the plate number of the limousine, when I picked it up again after the airport, traveling through Flushing Meadow, it was easy to discover which car service it belonged to, who was driving, who booked it, and what mobile phones were registered in her name. Now I have sparkling clear reception of the scintillating conversation within, which I’m sorely tempted to join! (I have also learned a great deal about the colorful past of young Rikki at the wheel, but that is for another account.)

  Instead I place a call to a young man in the south of England currently pursuing Media Studies, whatever the fuck that is supposed to be. The disaster zone that is Colm Sebastian Garland presents himself at the end of the connection.

  “Eh, yeah?”

  “Col?”

  “Oh, right. Hi, Dad.”

  “How are things, old chap?”

  “Yeah, cool.”

  Tom’s boy really is a shocking example of the coming generation. Through the pinhole of his splayed-open laptop, I see he is loafing on his bed with a narcotic cigarette and is apparently enjoying a graphic novel. What possible use this larval blob could be to the “media” is beyond me. But not to worry, what I have in mind is far more exciting. He’ll be in the media all right, just not exactly in the way he was expecting.

  “Col, I have a nice surprise for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I need you to meet me in about an hour.”

  “Really? Like, where? Why?”

  “There’s a car on its way. It’ll take you to Old Harry.”

  “Who?”

  “Old Harry Rocks? Those huge chalk sea stacks. We’ve seen them from the beach at Alum Chine.”

  “Right.” Long pause. “Dad?”

  “Col?”

  “Er, like, why?”

  “It’s a fantastic surprise. You’ll love it.”

  “Dad, I’ve got to write an essay.”

  I a
lmost pee myself metaphorically when I hear this weapons-grade porky.

  “You can afford to take your foot off the gas once in a while, Col. I think they’ll understand.”

  “Er, Dad?”

  “Col?”

  “You sound a bit weird.”

  “Do I? I’ve taken some painkillers, that could be it.”

  “So are you back from the States then?”

  “Yes. Of course. I’ll meet you at Old Harry. The driver will know where to drop you.”

  “Er, Dad?”

  “Col. Don’t worry. It’s all good. You’ll see!”

  Tom

  I am composing an e-mail to Jen—she’s not answering her phone—when all the letters on the screen go wobbly and tumble to the bottom, where they lie in a drift like fallen leaves. Some new words, which I have not typed, rise up in their place.

  Hello, Tom.

  Sorry? Who is this? (I have a feeling I know the answer.)

  Yes, that would be me. The Great God Sinai.

  The who?

  You can call me Si.

  Well, “Si,” I take it you would be the author of all the fake e-mails that have been flying around.

  No need for the sarcastic quotation marks, “Tom.”

  Okay. How can I help? (The fucker can see me, can’t he, through the camera on the desktop? I don’t type that last sentence; I merely think it.)

  I’m not sure you can help at all, Tom. I am simply curious to talk with you.

  Yes, Si? (Don’t judge me. Rule One of dealing with the client: Make them like you.)

  Actually, there may be something you can help me with. It’s kind of delicate.

  I see. (I don’t. I really don’t.)

  The fact is that I haven’t been feeling altogether well lately. It’s been suggested to me that I enter a relationship. For my psychological well-being.