by Adam Brookes
They took off, and were in the air for no more than half an hour. When they landed, another car was waiting, right there on the tarmac. It drove them off the airport onto an expressway, the driver silent.
Pearl looked at the road signs.
Guangzhou. They were in China.
Think, Pearl.
The food was superb. Pearl watched as the waitresses in shiny red qipao with split skirts brought plates of paper-thin pork, braised with garlic bolts and scallions and translucent mushrooms; bowls of daoxiaomian, the noodles shaved into long ribbons in broth with beef and coriander; steamed fish in peppers and sesame and the earthy black vinegar. A special Shanxi meal, for a family whose roots lay there.
Pearl focused on the details of each intricate dish, because the whole was too difficult to take in. She was in China. But why? No one was going to enlighten her. There was only this room, the steam curling off the fish, and an assemblage of people also unknown to her, but all of whom seemed to know her father—and to know all about her.
There were six at the table: Pearl and her father and mother, and three others who remained a mystery. One was Lao Xiong—no full name, just the respectful Lao and a surname. He was clearly in charge, a wiry man with a face like a beaver, sleek and sharp-toothed. He made the conversation, flattering her father, asked him questions about life in America: the politics, the wars, the popular disaffection with Washington, declining power. Questions from a Party man, thought Pearl, questions that require predictable answers. Her father was expansive, emphatic in his answers, which were, Pearl felt, mostly baloney.
Next to her mother sat an older woman of minute stature, gold-framed spectacles and elegant grey hair kept short and parted to one side in a style suggestive of earlier, more utilitarian days. She said little, but listened, keenly, her eyes flickering about the table.
And the last man at the table ate little, but smoked, to Pearl’s quiet disgust. Lao something-or-other, she’d missed it. He was battle-scarred, with a face like leather stretched on a rack, dark and lined with the crevasses of some unnamed, unimaginable combat. In his sixties, perhaps, losing his hair. He had about him the air of a discarded, tough, unkillable thing. He held his cigarette peasant-style, between the second and third fingers, his hand in a claw. And he watched Pearl.
Who were they? Beyond being her father’s “associates,” the only one on whom she heard any background was Lao Xiong—apparently an old classmate from Taiyuan University of Technology, where they lived eight to a room in the eighties and studied outside under the street lamps late at night, surviving on noodles and peanuts and weak beer. Such days! What a time! Lao Xiong leaned across the table, his face a little flushed from the wine, and spoke straight to her.
“Those were the days when China was coming back to life! When Deng Xiaoping was prising the country open and telling us anything was possible. Anything.”
Her father was nodding. “And, by God, we knew what we had, didn’t we? The moment we were living in. We knew.”
Pearl realised they were all looking at her, and now the battle-scarred one spoke, an illusionless rasp in an accent Pearl had never heard, something from deep in the red-earthed heartlands of central China.
“You live in an important moment, too,” he said. “Do you understand how important this moment is?”
She said nothing.
“This moment is important because of technology. Don’t you think?” he said. He didn’t speak unkindly, despite his fearsome looks. In fact, he was quite gentle, twinkling a little like a proud uncle.
“I suppose,” she said.
“Oh, yes. Technology is strategic capital, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“So, it follows, doesn’t it, that those who possess the technology will be those who have the greatest strategic advantage. What do you think?”
She considered for a moment.
“I think that innovation is more important than technology.”
He looked interested.
“Is it? Is it really? Now why do you say that?”
Think, Pearl. Get through this.
“Ideas,” she said. “You can have all the technology in the world, but unless you have ideas, you’ll never be able to use technology in new ways. It’s innovation that brings advantage.”
The table had gone very quiet. The older woman spoke.
“And, if I may ask you, Pearl, how do you find yourself thinking about and using innovation in the work you are doing now? I find this fascinating. Could you give us an example?”
She calculated for a second. I’m not telling them anything they don’t already know, she thought.
“Well, one of the projects I’m working on at Hopkins uses drones. The drones themselves are pretty basic. They’re elegant, but simple. But what we’re trying to do is find ways of making them work together on a task. So we put sensors on each drone. That means the drone can see and hear and maybe even digitally sniff other drones. Then we give each drone algorithms that allow it to figure out what its own role should be, depending on what the other drones are doing. So the drones, like, look around and make decisions. So there’s nothing particularly technologically advanced about this, but what we’re doing is very difficult and very innovative. It’ll change everything, actually.”
“So the drones will function as a sort of single entity.”
“Uh, yeah, if you like. A single large consciousness, made out of many small processors of information.” She swallowed, waited.
The woman acted astonished. Pearl glanced over at her father. He was looking down, concentrating on his food, sucking on a bone.
“Well, that is amazing. And may I say also, that you speak Mandarin extremely well. Extremely well,” the older woman said. She looked around herself, as if an idea had occurred to her. “We should make sure Pearl is invited to conferences and workshops here, Beijing, and Shanghai, wherever they are doing similar work. We should make sure she meets our scientists so they can exchange ideas. Shouldn’t we?”
Murmurs of assent around the table.
“Would you do that, Pearl?” asked Battle Scar. “Would you do that for us?” He turned to the older woman with concern. “She’s so busy! She’s still doing her undergraduate degree. Don’t put pressure on her!”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to. But Pearl is embarking upon a remarkable career. I hope that in the coming years …”
Her father was staring at Pearl now with a look that said, You know what you must do now. And she felt herself shrinking inward, her focus narrowing: to the tablecloth, to the film of oil atop a bowl of soup and the smell of the cigarette smoke.
“I’d be happy to,” Pearl said.
“Well, that’s excellent. Just excellent,” said Lao Xiong, the beaver face. “We can talk more about it at the meetings tomorrow.”
What meetings tomorrow?
Pearl and her parents were taken to rooms at the top of the hotel, on the sixteenth floor. Her room was silent, and the air came through a special purification system to keep out particulate pollution. The room adjoined that of her parents, but she locked the door between them. She pushed the curtains to one side and peered outside.
Guangzhou was a luminous, glistening, night city. So alien to her. Every street a promise.
She put on her shoes, grabbed her backpack, took her key and eased the door shut behind her. But at the elevators, there was a man in a suit who gave her a regretful smile and politely walked her back to the room.
They were picked up the next morning by two black Audis. Her parents were ushered into one, she into the other. There, in the back, sat Battle Scar, looking like he’d been stitched together out of sinew, reeking of tobacco, in a black golf jacket and an absurd pair of sunglasses. He gave her a big smile, seemed genuinely pleased to see her, taking off the sunglasses to address her.
“Now, Pearl, we’re going to visit some more associates of your father’s. They’re very keen to see him, and to meet you.”
“
Who are they?”
“They’re smart people. Thoughtful people. Some are in business, some are in government, some are scientists and are thinking about technology and innovation, same as you.”
“What do they want?”
He looked surprised.
“Want? Oh, they don’t want anything. I mean, they’ll probably get overexcited and start making all sorts of proposals and promises.” He smiled fondly with a shake of his head. “But don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” He gave a deep chuckle.
The car nosed its way through backstreets. She didn’t know where they were going. Battle Scar sat silent.
They pulled in before a grey iron gate on a tree-lined avenue. Battle Scar got out and gestured to her to follow. He walked to a keypad beneath a surveillance camera, punched in numbers and leaned in to a screen, and the gate slid open to reveal a scrubby lawn, some moth-eaten trees, and a house that looked to date from colonial times. It had a veranda, a portico, shutters on the windows.
Battle Scar walked her up some steps and they entered what seemed to be a reception room. They sat on sofas of pale green, antimacassars atop them, and waited. Battle Scar lit a cigarette, holding it in his claw, and nodded at her encouragingly.
After a while, a young woman in a grey suit came in and made a wordless gesture, and they walked down a corridor to a meeting room, the same green armchairs around the walls, facing inward, a low table next to each, a red carpet, the shutters closed. Her parents were already there; so was beaver-faced Lao Xiong, and several others.
Pearl’s eye was caught by a younger woman, sitting alone. She wore soft, brown calf-length boots over jeans and a cashmere shawl in a shade of pinkish beige that in and of itself spoke of money, of boutiques and hotels and Paris or Geneva or London, of how Pearl imagined these places. She was perfectly made up, her hair in an elegant, layered bob. She sat with her ankles crossed, like a fifties movie actress. Pearl felt again her own shapelessness, her thick glasses, the stringy hair in its ponytail.
Her father was deep in conversation with a short, sprightly man she did not recognise. They seemed to be quite familiar with each other. Her mother sat next to him, not speaking. The sprightly man nodded at Pearl and smiled, as if in recognition. Battle Scar showed her to a chair, and gradually the room quietened, awaiting something. She had no idea what.
A door opened. Some of the people half rose from their chairs, anticipatory expressions on their faces. An elderly man walked in. He was very trim, wore an open-necked shirt, a blue sleeveless sweater and well-ironed slacks, and moved with assurance. He did not look at Pearl as he passed her, and in his wake she smelled soap, perhaps a hint of cologne. He sat in one of the green armchairs at the far side of the room, opposite her. He sat with his knees together, his hands folded in his lap, the posture striking Pearl as slightly effeminate. Everybody else in the room deferred to him, clearly. Pearl noticed his soft, smooth skin, its even tone, as if he had lavished care upon it. She thought of him as pure, spotless. He had eyes that shone like little dark gems.
Lao Xiong was sitting next to him, speaking quietly to him while gesturing to Pearl. He nodded, regarding her. Then he spoke, in a high, reedy voice.
“It’s very good to meet you.”
“And you,” she said.
“How are you finding China?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“Is it good to be back in your homeland?”
“Well, I guess I don’t really consider China …” She felt her father’s eyes on her. “It’s fine, thank you,” she said. The elegant woman was writing something in a notepad.
“Of course, you have spent most of your life in America,” Spotless Man said gently. “That probably feels more like home, doesn’t it?”
“Well …”
“But you still have many relatives and friends here. So, a foot in both countries, perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Of course! Your aunt, your grandmother, in Taiyuan. And your cousin.” He was gesturing across the room to the sprightly man, the one who had been talking to her father.
My cousin? she thought. What cousin?
“Your cousin. Whom everyone calls Jiachong.” Beetle.
The sprightly man whom everybody called Beetle raised his hand in greeting. The elderly, clean man carried on.
“Your cousin is a very able man, and I am very fortunate to have worked with him for a long time. We are old comrades.” Polite laughter rippled round the room. “So, whenever you and your father would like to come back to China to visit, or perhaps for a conference or a study tour, your cousin will handle all the arrangements. Everything! You just let him know. Your father knows how to be in touch with him.”
Pearl had no idea what to say.
“Thank you,” she managed.
Spotless Man had raised a finger as if thinking of an important question.
“And tell me, Pearl, when do you graduate again? How embarrassing! I should know this but I seem to have forgotten.”
“I graduate in eighteen months’ time.”
“Of course, and then you go to work for …?”
Lao Xiong leaned into him, whispered.
“That’s right. Telperion. That’s right. And you’ll do your Ph.D. while you’re working there. Such ambition! Really, we should all be so ambitious. And your Ph.D., it will continue your work on artificial consciousness?”
She swallowed.
“That’s my plan.”
“Your plan, yes. And that’s what Telperion will want you to work on.”
Pearl looked around. The whole room’s eyes were on her. What is happening here?
Battle Scar saved her.
“I’m sure she doesn’t know what Telperion will have her working on. How can she know what her future bosses will want? None of us know that, do we?” There was more polite laughter, and Spotless Man looked a little rueful, as if there were some backstory there, something the room knew that she did not. He flapped a hand in resignation, smiled.
“Of course. I apologise. But perhaps Pearl can tell us what she thinks she will be working on. What the most important challenges will be.”
The thought came out of nowhere. Are they recording this? Filming it? She felt a flash of adrenalin, the colour rising in her cheeks. Her father sat very erect in his chair, mouth clamped shut, jaw tight. Her mother was looking at the floor.
“I’m … not sure,” she said. She laughed nervously.
Battle Scar cleared his throat.
“Perhaps you could speculate a little for us. What do you think the most important challenges in technology will be in the coming, say, twenty years? Just for interest’s sake.”
Should I pass this test? Or fail it? Which will get me out of here?
“Well … I … uh … well, the quantification of consciousness. Artificial Intelligence. The transition to Artificial General Intelligence. And then Super Intelligence. Deep learning. These are certainly things that will be so, so important. Uh, nanotechnology, of course. Quantum computing, evolutionary computation. That stuff matters.” She exhaled. “Um, photonics?”
Spotless Man held up a hand.
“Well, your understanding is way beyond mine. I am just a foolish old man who has trouble with his mobile phone. I have to ask my grandson to help!” Cue more sycophantic laughter. He held his hands out to Pearl.
“But, let me ask you a question. Probably it will sound very naïve. You talk about Artificial Intelligence. Is this … real? Do you think it will happen soon?”
Pearl blinked.
“It’s already happening.”
“But, I mean, what you call Super Intelligence. When you talk with your peers, young, smart people, do they think that it will happen?”
“Of course. It’s only a matter of when.”
“And when do you think?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Sooner than you think. Someone will do it.”
“Who?” said Battle Scar. “Who will do it? Will
it be a government? Or military?”
“Uh, I doubt it,” she said. “You won’t need the resources of the state. It will just be someone in a lab or a company or a start-up somewhere, some unregulated space maybe, who makes the right tweak to the right deep-learning algorithm. And, boom.”
Spotless Man nodded, as if a troubling question had been made clear to him.
“And when you say ‘boom,’ what do you mean?”
“I mean that a computer that can teach itself will learn exponentially. Its rate of learning will accelerate. It’ll just get faster and faster, until it surpasses the human brain. And then it will keep going, faster and faster.”
“And do you anticipate, Pearl, that your work will be relevant to this moment? This ‘boom’?”
She felt a flush of annoyance.
“Well, maybe. I don’t know. I mean, consciousness and intelligence are aligned, but I don’t know.” What did they want of her, these old men, fumbling around in the dark? Did they have any idea?
She thought suddenly of Charles, at the awful baozi gathering at Cal’s. They want your shit, Pearl. And they will manipulate you to get it.
There was a silence in the room. Then Spotless Man spoke.
“Well, Pearl, it has been a great pleasure meeting you and I hope we’ll meet again soon, and I hope we can talk about all these big questions much more.” And with that he stood and made his way out of the room, this clean, dapper little man. But as he went Pearl saw how her father caught his eye and the two of them exchanged a look. And then her father turned to her “cousin,” Beetle, who gave a small nod.