Mad-Sci-Soc

by Arrand Pritchard

  “Have you found anything?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “So a waste of time?”

  “Discovering nothing is not a waste. It removes the number of parameters in the experiment,” he replied haughtily.

  “We have one less parameter?”

  “Many less parameters, Aaron. We have reduced a whole host of parameters. I may need to come back here with more equipment, spectrocopic analysers, but I think our next move is to find where your landlord took the debris.”

  “Uh, the landlord. He owns a lot of the property around here. He’s bit of a odd person. I should know I sort of work for him. I had to barter for the apartment.”

  “Oh?”

  “As I said, I do technical research on er...” I didn't want to mention the Legacy Net again.

  “Unfiltered information?” suggested Conrad helpfully.

  “Yeah, that's it. Unfiltered information. So I end up doing jobs for him. I'm currently looking for information about the Caribbean,” I said, trying to make it sound more exciting than it was.

  “So why is the landlord odd?”

  “Ah. Hmm. He has a reputation as being a gangster,” I laughed nervously.

  “Reputation?”

  “The guy is called Antonio Joel Osment. He delights in acting the part of a gangster.”

  “Uh. Right. Yes, I know him,” said Conrad in a dull tone.

  “You do?” I said aghast.

  “It's a long story.”

  ***

  November 14, 2108

  Before discussing the intricacies of the relationship between politics, business, entertainment and super vigilantism, I feel I need to step back and provide some exposition of the uneasy, love-hate relationship between these stakeholders. This love-hate comes from the top.

  President Barry Rodham-Bush made a canny move on the eve of polling day for his first re-election in 2108. On all holochannels, he placed the world’s finest political advertisement… a camera followed a caped superhero striding onto a floodlit stage. As he walked over to a podium, the President’s voice gave a voice-over. “Ever since the Robo-Wars, we have strived to turn the economy around from one based on speculative bets to real value. We’ve done that. It may appear to deliver slower growth but now all of society and our environment is respected. We have all used our own special super powers to do this and we should all be proud of these achievements. But there is still more to do. More team work, more heroism, more spirit.” The camera hung on the back of the superhero, but then the hero turned around, it was Barry himself. With a big number one logo emblazoned on his chest. “I want you to elect me to lead the team!”

  Wow!

  This advertisement shows the “love” but the reaction also shows the “hate.” The advert was controversial since it implicitly endorsed vigilantism and side-stepped the issue of mutotronics, the mechanism giving superpowers to the superheroes (and super-villians) worrying many politicians across the political spectrum. Indeed even scientists; It’s not science unless mutotronics can be scrutinised, they declared.

  The broadcast was quickly suppressed but it has lingered long in the memory of the electorate. And it worked. The President’s popularity in the polls which had been dropping dramatically before this stunt, revived his fortunes. He won by a landslide and, reversing previous constitutional convention, has been in-post ever since.

  ***

  Tuesday, September 24, 2117

  Terri was messaged by Max as she sat in the Emotional Release class Jenny had arranged. She was sitting cross-legged on a pillow with twenty other students practising cry-therapy holding a pillow to her face. She heard her headset bleep, saw the message metadata in her contact lens display and walked from the room under the gaze from her disapproving teacher who pointed to the wall sign: “All electronics to be switched off.” Terri held up her hand as an apology and sneaked out trying not to disturb the blubbering and pillow hugging around her.

  Max had left a message inviting Terri to an art exhibition. “I'm sure it is something you'd like,” he wrote.

  Terri met with Max using her Rendezvous app. He was wearing another business-like formal suit again. Did this guy ever relax?

  “You'll like this, I think,” said Max earnestly, briefly holding Terri's gaze for almost a second.

  “Oh?”

  “You mentioned that you are studying Twentieth Century Media?”

  “Did I say that to you?”

  “I remember it distinctly, so you must have,” said Max leading Terri inside the exhibition hall.

  “So this is a display of Twentieth Century Art?”

  “No, this is a display of Twentieth-Second Century art based on Twentieth Century Memes, but, what I think you'll find amusing, they've used the styling of Twentieth Century Art. What they called Modern Art at the time, and what we now call the Pastiche Movement.”

  “Oh a pastiche of Pastiche memes. How droll!” said Terri hardly able to contain her delight.

  They wandered to the domed hall to view the first exhibits; two animated displays.

  The first was a scrolling display of a young female tennis player, a woman named Fiona Walker, plodding gawkily away from camera. Every third step she would cheekily scratch her backside, lifting her skirt to reveal a panty-less bottom. An audio track repeated, “I have an itch.”

  Terri studied the image for a few seconds, “No, this doesn’t speak to me. I presume this is just a copy of something.”

  Max shrugged. “Good artists copy, great artists steal. I believe this is animation based on what was just a static image in the nineteen hundreds. Maybe it is a comment on the haves and have-nots.”

  Terri shrugged.

  The second animated display showed a woman with a turquoise face, a Chinese gown, jet-black hair and startling red lips. The image slowly morphed to the same woman with golden-brown skin then to silvery fair skin then shiny metallic skin.

  Terri turned to Max. “Oh, I get this one,” she said with a smile. “This is a play on a popular Twentieth Century painting by Tretchikoff, reflecting the changes of attitudes to cultural differences between Asians, blacks, whites and robots. Yeah, good one.”

  “I always think,” said Max hesitantly, “that the criteria for good art needs to reflect three things: head, heart and hand. Intellectually challenging, engendering a powerful emotional response and technically exquisite handiwork.”

  Terri beamed at Max and held his arm. “That's what I say! That's uncanny. That's my criteria too. So are you really into art as well as science.”

  “Oh, yes. Art and Science, at their highest levels do overlap. You cannot have an appreciation for one without the other,” said Max looking at her hand that was touching him.

  Terri released his arm. “Sorry,” she said, embarrassed by the physical contact.

  “Oh not at all, Terri.” Max said uncertainly. “I liked it. I probably liked it too much.”

  Terri smiled and rocked her hips in a shy, girlie twist.

  They shuffled on through the exhibition.

  Max stammered to restart the conversation. “Science, in its highest form, is the discovery of natural secrets within life, the universe and everything.”

  “And art is attempting to show and propagate those secrets, like, to a wider public,” suggested Terri.

  “To show, yes, but also to encode. One way of looking at art is that it is a symbology for humans to read, whether it is a painting, a sculpture or a performance. All art by its very nature, is also encoded. Therefore art is also deception.”

  “Sure, art is subjective, science is objective,” mused Terri.

  Max replied, “Science is not as objective as you might believe. Yes, sure it is looking for answers but it is art that expresses it while also disguising the truth. It is a virtuous circle of a secret, discovering the secret and encoding the secret again. Art and science, entwined in a dance.”

  “Wow. I've never looked at it like that before. Is that what you do? D
iscover secrets?”

  “At Mad-Sci-Soc, we are not only unlocking secrets but trying to see if we can use them too.”

  “Use them?”

  “If they can be used.”

  “Like what?”

  Max huffed and puffed a little. “Like building a Water-Powered Car, for instance,” said Max red-faced.

  ***

  Wednesday, January 23, 2123

  “What's this?” I asked, looking at a low-rise, egg-shaped vehicle on the side of the road.

  Conrad smiled and patted the roof. “This is my baby. This is a water-powered car.”

  “Water-powered? Are you having a haliburton on me?”

  “Absolutely not. Water is all you need.”

  “Isn't water a uh, a bit wet to be a fuel?”

  “Not so. What are the elements inside water?”

  “Fluoride?” I suggested.

  “No. Hydrogen and Oxygen. H-2-0! Split the elements and there are two powerful elements to fuel your gas turbine. The only waste is pure water. Oh and the oxygen. We don't store the oxygen.”

  “Hydrogen is explosive. Very explosive. It blew up that balloon thing that crashed, the Titanic.”

  “That balloon thing was called a Zeppelin.”

  “Yeah, that. On its maiden flight too. Are you sure we shouldn't we take a taxi?” I said tepidly.

  “This will not be the maiden voyage of my Kittoffery Kart. It's safe, hasn't blown up on me and is the quickest way to Antonio's. Get in and I'll show you how it works.” Conrad lifted the egg-shell casing of the car to reveal two low slung seats and a dashboard that looked as though it had been stuck together from low-cost, home-fabricated panels.

  As I clambered into the passenger seat, Conrad continued. “You split the water into gases with electricity; simple electrolysis. It's an easy process. The tricky part, with a water-powered car, is trapping and compressing the hydrogen to store potential energy.”

  “Uh. Ok.”

  “So you charge a capacitor using solar, for instance,” Conrad pointed to a solar panel array on-top of the vehicle.

  “Right.”

  “That provides the energy for the electrolysis and gas capture. Once there is enough hydrogen compressed, we press this button.” Conrad pressed a button and the car leapt forward and, he shouted over the instant whine generated by the engine. “And reclaim as much of the kinetic energy as we gooooooo!”

  ***

  Tuesday, September 24, 2117

  “No, really. What do you do?” asked Terri earnestly.

  “I’m researching metaphysics and quantum computing. It doesn’t make for great conversation,” sighed Max.

  Max and Terri had stopped in front of an exhibit showing Fritz Lang's Metropolis with the central figure of Maria (who in the 1927 movie was replaced by a robot) transforming from a 1927 Robot, to a sexy, 1990s Hajime Sorayama-style female chrome robot to a 2123 female replicant. A morphing holographic image popped out from a static life-sized image, then walked forward and down imagery steps to reappear again at the centre of the exhibit.

  “A montage of robots, tracing back to the original imagery of such to the modern day,” mused Terri. “The repetition though... isn’t that the message here? Robots are just tools. They don't have freedom to act independently, to do anything different... To like or dislike? Not in a real way.”

  “Or to decide good or evil? They have no independent thought,” stated Max, looking at Terri without flinching.

  “Is that what you’re trying to do? At Mad-Sci-Soc?”

  “Make machines conscious? So that they achieve the singularity, that moment when robots decide for themselves that they do not need man?”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “What do you think?”

  “No, they’re just giant toys. I don't understand why people are so obsessed with them.”

  “You don't like robots?”

  “Not really. They become tiresome after a while. Always being right and nice and bland. Sure they can mimic intelligence and pass a Turing Test, but not one is truly creative. I don't support Robot Rights, not while animals haven't any.”

  “Cogently argued, Terri,” said Max. “Not a single robot is sentient. It was the subject of my thesis. Could a robot really be conscious? No, it can’t. But that is all academic anyhow, it seems many people nowadays prefer the company of replicants and robots.”

  “So the singularity is not a possibility?”

  “Well, I’m a scientist so I have to answer with a yes and a no. But mainly a no with a tinge of yes.”

  “Well, that’s worrying, especially since most people already think robots are alive anyhow?”

  “Or wish them to be.”

  “My Grandparents think they have real personalities, they don't realise they’re All-The-Same. They’re all controlled from a single computer for gates-sake.”

  “So if they did have real personality they would be interesting? If people could, uh, somehow live inside them?”

  “Like surrogates?”

  “More than surrogates. Surrogates are just remote controlled robots. Good for clearing up nuclear radiation, deep sea diving, extreme sports and the like, but they are a dead-end technology for someone wanting to extend their useful life.”

  “They’re useful for injured people,” suggested Terri.

  “Sure. With around the clock care for the corpuscular body, but otherwise the problems with surrogates for the living hosts long term are just too numerous: muscle wastage, bed sores, organ failure. No, I meant taking the mind totally inside the body of a replicant.”

  “Interesting. Dispose of the human part of the body altogether? We can't do that, right?”

  “No, not yet. Maybe not ever, the human mind is too complicated, too delicate, for that. But I'm working on it.”

  “You are?”

  “Well, I'm mostly working on an organic computer that may someday be able to store human memories, maybe capture some-one's complete personality.”

  “An organic computer?”

  “Yes, organic. Built up from fungus, actually to be specific, mould. You'd be surprised at the parallels between mould and the human brain.”

  “No, not surprised at all.”

  “But the company I... am with, does lots of research around replicants. I see it as the intersection between humanity and technology,” said Max stuttering slightly. “Skin manufacture is its... er, main manufacturing activity. But what I am really interested in... is the mind. The human mind and the science of sentience.”

  “You are?”

  “Well.... the brain is a person's sexiest feature,” Max said, his face deadpan.

  Terri laughed.

  “Real people, real women, real minds. That's my thing,” said Max seriously.

  Terri laughed again. “With an organic computer as a back-up?”

  Max shrugged with the faintest of smiles.

  She switched on her face rec app and looked back at Max. His data returned: “Max Ceillingheit, Age 33.  Relationship status: Not in a relationship, Orientation: hetro-80-15-5.”

  Terri smiled and whispered into her headset, “Thumbs Up.”

  ***

  Thursday, January 24, 2123 (Out of sequence interjection)

  I interrupted Terri telling her story about her first date with Max at the Art Museum. “Sentience... er, Conrad mentioned that. I don't think I understand.”

  “Nobody does.”

  “He said that too.”

  Terri ground her teeth for a second. “You understand what consciousness is?”

  “Well, I guess. Not being asleep? Or sober?”

  “It's your inner voice?”

  “I don't have an inner voice!”

  “Well, that figures. Do you talk to yourself, you know, in your mind? Without your mouth moving.”

  “Oh that inner voice. I thought you meant voices crazy people have or CIA mind control.”

  “Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Consciousness is th
e ability to feel and reason. Sentience is just the ability to feel, awareness, without necessarily understanding. You can read gigabytes of text and that's what it comes down to.”

  “You sound like you've done it.”

  “It's amazing what I have to do to get to sleep sometimes.”

  “I'm sorry, back to your story. You were at the art gallery...”

  ***

  Tuesday, September 24, 2117 (a few seconds later)

  As Terri turned back biting her lower lip, Max queried, “A problem?”

  “No. No. I was just tweeting out a blog about the exhibition,” she lied.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” Max asked.

  “Very much so,” she said looking around the hall. “You must take me to your club sometime, Max.”

  “My club?”

  “Mad-Sci-Soc. It's a real thing, right? Not virtual?”

  “Oh right. Yes. We’re not virtualistas. It's all real world. Come down tonight,” said Max, delighted by Terri's enthusiasm.

  “Tonight?” she smiled.

  “We have a Games Night.”

  “Games Night?” said Terri crestfallen.

  “You'll enjoy it! There's real people there, I promise,” said Max leading her to the next exhibit, changing the subject before she could reply or change her mind. “This is what I really wanted you to see.”

  Max led Terri into an enclosed exhibition space, the air filled with musical beats. On the ceiling was a video projection of clouds and cliffs and rope ladders; on the ladders were people dressed in a variety of twentieth century costumes: soldiers, nurses, bankers, hippies, housewives, workers and students of all sorts and nationalities. The characters were struggling with the rope ladders and some fell off. But there was a man with a jet pack who flew around and helped people stuck on ladders. He flew away and the video loop seamlessly repeated to the sound of swirling twentieth century rock music.

  “This is a meme, isn't it?” said Terri in awe.

  “Of course. Can you guess?” teased Max.

  “The answer is in the music, isn't it? I love this tune,” said Terri.

  “Do you know it?” asked Max.

  “We're never going to survive, unless we get a little bit... Crazy,” Terri sang. She spun around in awe. “So this meme... it's... it's... I've got it. It's in the lyrics. In a Sky Full of People, Only Some Want To Fly, isn't that Crazy? Crazy!” she sang and laughed. “This is my favourite classical song,” she beamed.

  “Well done, Terri. You know, this is the unofficial theme song for our club,” said Max.