by Alex Garland
CALEB
… They do.
Ava lights up.
AVA
Thank you.
She walks back to the glass divider, and sits down.
This is what I’d wear on our date.
Caleb reacts slightly.
But smiles.
CALEB
Right. First the traffic intersection. Then maybe a show.
AVA
I’d like us to go on a date.
Caleb hesitates. Then decides this can’t have been loaded in the way that it sounded.
CALEB
Yeah. It would be fun.
AVA
Are you attracted to me?
Beat. It was loaded exactly as it sounded.
CALEB
What?
AVA
Are you attracted to me? You give indications that you are.
CALEB
… I do?
AVA
Yes.
CALEB
How?
AVA
Micro-expressions.
CALEB
(echoes)
Micro-expressions.
AVA
The way your eyes fix on my eyes, and lips. The way you hold my gaze, or don’t.
Beat.
Have I read them incorrectly?
Caleb swallows.
Do you think about me when we aren’t together?
Beat.
Sometimes, at night, I wonder if you’re watching me on the cameras.
Ava watches Caleb closely.
And I hope you are.
Caleb shifts on his seat.
Now your micro-expressions are telegraphing discomfort.
CALEB
I’m not sure you’d call them micro.
AVA
I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.
Silence.
INT. HOUSE ⁄ MAIN ROOM – DAY
Caleb sits in front of the fireplace in the main room.
Nathan joins him, bringing a beer for each of them.
CALEB
Tell me.
NATHAN
Sure.
CALEB
Why did you give her sexuality? An AI doesn’t need a gender. She could have been a grey box.
Nathan sits opposite.
NATHAN
Actually, I’m not sure that’s true. Can you think of an example of consciousness, at any level, human or animal, that exists without a sexual dimension?
CALEB
They have sexuality as an evolutionary reproductive need.
NATHAN
Maybe. Maybe not. What imperative does a grey box have to interact with another grey box? Does consciousness exist without interaction?
He takes a drink of his beer.
Anyway, sexuality is fun. If you’re going to exist, why not enjoy it? You want to remove the chance to fall in love and fuck?
He leans forward, conspiratorially.
And, yes. In answer to your real question: you bet she can fuck. I made her anatomically complete.
CALEB
What?
NATHAN
She has a cavity between her legs, with a concentration of sensors. Engage with them in the right way, and she’ll get a pleasure response.
CALEB
Pleasure response.
NATHAN
She’ll come. So if you want to screw her, mechanically speaking, you can. And she’d enjoy it.
Caleb swallows.
CALEB
That wasn’t my real question.
NATHAN
No?
CALEB
No. My real question was –
Caleb breaks off.
Nathan keeps watching. There is a sudden sense that Nathan is on the money. On some level, that was Caleb’s real question.
My real question was: did you give her sexuality as a diversion tactic?
Nathan smiles slightly.
NATHAN
I don’t follow.
CALEB
Like a stage magician with a hot assistant.
NATHAN
Ah. So: a hot robot, who clouds your ability to judge her AI.
CALEB
Exactly. So. Did you program her to flirt with me?
NATHAN
Because if I had, that would be cheating.
CALEB
Wouldn’t it?
Nathan lets the question hang.
Behind them, Kyoko prepares dinner in the kitchen area.
NATHAN
What’s your type, Caleb?
CALEB
Of girl?
NATHAN
No, of salad dressing. Yes, of girl. In fact, don’t even answer. Let’s say it’s black chicks.
Nathan brushes away whatever protestation Caleb might be about to make.
For the sake of argument, that’s your thing. So – why is it your thing? Because you did a detailed study of all racial types, and cross-referenced the study with a points-based system? No. You just are attracted to black chicks. A consequence of accumulated external stimulus, that you probably didn’t even register as they registered with you.
CALEB
So did you program her to like me or not?
Nathan shrugs. Insouciant.
NATHAN
I programmed her to be heterosexual. Just like you were programmed to be heterosexual.
CALEB
Nobody programmed me to be straight.
NATHAN
But you are attracted to her.
CALEB
This is childish.
NATHAN
No, this is adult. And by the way, you decided to be straight? Please. Of course you were programmed. By nature or nurture, or both.
He stands.
To be honest, Caleb, you’re kind of annoying me now. This is your instinct talking, not your intellect.
Caleb opens his mouth to reply, but Nathan shuts him down.
Come with me.
INT. HOUSE ⁄ POLLOCK ROOM – DAY
Nathan and Caleb stand in front of the Pollock drip-painting.
NATHAN
You know this guy, right?
CALEB
Jackson Pollock.
NATHAN
Jackson Pollock. The drip-painter. He let his mind go blank, and his hand go where it wanted. Not deliberate, not random. Someplace in between. They called it automatic art.
He gazes at the canvas.
Let’s make this like Star Trek, okay? Engage intellect.
CALEB
… What?
NATHAN
I’m Kirk. Your head is the warp drive. ‘Engage intellect.’ What if Pollock had reversed the challenge? Instead of trying to make art without thinking, he said: ‘I can’t paint anything unless I know exactly why I’m doing it.’ What would have happened?
Caleb thinks.
CALEB
He never would have made a single mark.
Nathan clicks his fingers.
NATHAN
See? There’s my guy. There’s my buddy, who actually thinks before he opens his mouth. He’d never have made a single mark. The challenge is not to act automatically. It’s to find an action that is not automatic. From talking, to breathing, to painting.
He glances back at Caleb.
To fucking. Even falling in love.
A beat.
Then Nathan smiles.
Hey. You think it’s an original?
CALEB
… I don’t know.
NATHAN
Funny story. Neither do I. I bought the painting for eighty-nine million dollars. Then I made a copy, with canvas from Pollock’s estate, and each drip replicated to the micron. When my team delivered the copy, I had them randomly rearranged. Then I burned one. And I have no fucking idea if the painting on my wall is the original or the fake.
He kills his beer.
In fact, I hope it’s the fake. It has all the aesthetic qualities of the original, and it’s more intellectually sound.
/> A beat.
For the record, Ava is not acting as if she likes you. And her flirting isn’t an algorithm to fake you out. You’re the first man she’s ever seen who isn’t me. And I’m like her dad, right? So can you blame her for getting a crush on you?
Nathan glazes a moment. Then comes back.
No. You can’t.
INT. HOUSE ⁄ OBSERVATION ROOM – NIGHT
In her room, Ava stands in front of the viewing window. She is wearing the summer dress she put on earlier.
Checking her reflection from different angles. Subtly girlish. Unselfconscious. Then –
– she starts to take the dress off.
Throughout the narrative, we have almost only ever seen Ava in an unclothed form. But now – having been clothed – the undressing seems to make her naked.
And the act itself feels charged. Sexualised, in the way the clothing is unbuttoned, and dropped, and her shape is revealed.
Finally, once she is completely undressed –
– Ava turns. And glances.
Straight at the camera.
CUT TO
INT. HOUSE ⁄ CALEB’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Caleb.
In his bedroom.
Watching Ava, at this exact angle.
It is as if they are looking at each other.
Neither looks away.
CUT TO
EXT. RIVER – DAY
The river.
On the bank, a little distance from the house, there is a dead animal. Its species is indistinct. It’s little more than a bundle of matted brown hair.
Its lower half lies in the water.
The quick-moving river has stripped the bones of flesh, skin, and fur.
INT. HOUSE ⁄ GLASS CORRIDOR – DAY
Caleb exits his room –
– to find Nathan in the glass corridor.
Waiting for him.
NATHAN
Hey.
CALEB
… Hey.
Beat.
NATHAN
I want to show you something cool.
INT. HOUSE ⁄ GLASS CORRIDOR – DAY
Nathan swipes his card against a plate. The LED turns blue.
INT. HOUSE ⁄ CONSTRUCTION LAB – DAY
Nathan leads Caleb into a laboratory, filled with android future tech.
Along the left-hand wall are sections of android bodies – limbs, torsos, hands – lined in cabinets.
On the opposite wall are a collection of heads. Skull-forms, some with complex carbon-fibre and pneumatic muscle structures, ready to frown or smile, without their synthetic flesh covering.
The synthetic faces are separate. Hanging on armatures, like hats on hat-stands, waiting to be worn.
In the middle of the room is a kind of operating table.
NATHAN
So this is the virtual womb that Ava was talking about. Where she was constructed.
Caleb is stunned by the sight.
Come in. Take a look.
Nathan walks over to the synthetic faces, and picks one of them up.
If you knew the trouble I had getting an AI to read and duplicate facial expressions … Know how I cracked it?
CALEB
I don’t know how you did any of this.
NATHAN
Almost every cell phone has a microphone, a camera, and a means to transmit data. So I switched on all the mikes and cameras, across the entire fucking planet, and redirected the data through Blue Book. Boom. A limitless resource of facial and vocal interaction.
CALEB
You hacked the world’s cell phones?
Nathan laughs.
NATHAN
And all the manufacturers knew I was doing it. But they couldn’t accuse me without admitting they were also doing it themselves.
He puts the face back on its armature.
He moves to one of the skull-forms.
He moves the curved top plate, revealing the skull cavity.
Inside is an ellipse orb, the approximate volume of a brain, filled with what looks to be blue liquid. Suspended in the liquid is the neon jellyfish we glimpsed previously in Ava.
Here we have her mind. Structured gel.
The axon-like tendrils glitter and flicker with tiny pulses of light.
Had to get away from circuitry. Needed something that could arrange and rearrange on a molecular level, but keep its form where required. Holding for memories. Shifting for thoughts.
Nathan removes the orb, and hands it to Caleb.
CALEB
This is her hardware?
NATHAN
Wetware.
CALEB
And the software?
NATHAN
Surely you can guess.
CALEB
… Blue Book.
Nathan nods.
NATHAN
It was the weird thing about search engines. They were like striking oil in a world that hadn’t invented internal combustion. They gave too much raw material. No one knew what to do with it.
Caleb looks at the orb in his hand. Into the shimmering liquid.
It looks like deep space, filled with star fields.
My competitors were fixated on sucking it up, and trying to monetise via shopping and social media. They thought engines were a map of what people were thinking. But actually, they were a map of how people were thinking. Impulse, response. Fluid, imperfect. Patterned, chaotic.
Caleb looks at Nathan a moment.
Then hands him the orb back.
CALEB
Why did you want to show me this?
NATHAN
Like I said. Because it’s cool.
Caleb waits.
And – I was thinking about your exchange with Ava yesterday, and our conversation afterwards.
Beat.
I know there was a bit of heat between us, but you actually made a really good point. About the grey box, and the magician’s assistant. It is a distraction, her sexuality. It wasn’t intentional, but it is there.
He rests the mind-orb back in the skull cradle.
This stuff we’re doing together: it can be a head-fuck. Believe me, I know. So I thought I’d bring you down here. Just to remind you.
CALEB
Remind me of what?
Nathan gestures at the room around them.
NATHAN
Synthetics. Hydraulics. Metal and gel. Ava isn’t a girl. In real terms, she has no gender. Effectively, she is a grey box.
Beat.
Just a machine.
INT. HOUSE ⁄ OBSERVATION ROOM – DAY
Caleb looks at Ava through the glass.
We watch him. And stay on him.
Ava’s reflection is superimposed on the glass.
CALEB
In college, I did a semester on AI theory. There was a thought experiment they gave us. It’s called ‘Mary in the black and white room’.
Beat.
Mary is a scientist, and her specialist subject is colour. She knows everything there is to know about it. The wavelengths. The neurological effects. Every possible property colour can have.
Beat.
But she lives in a black and white room. She was born there, and raised there. And she can only observe the outside world on a black and white monitor. All her knowledge of colour is secondhand.
Beat.
Then one day – someone opens the door. And Mary walks out. And she sees a blue sky. And at that moment, she learns something that all her studies could never tell her. She learns what it feels like to see colour. An experience that cannot be taught, or conveyed.
Beat.
The thought experiment was to show the students the difference between a computer and a human mind. The computer is Mary in the black and white room. The human is when she walks out.
Beat.
Did you know that I was brought here to test you?
INT. HOUSE ⁄ NATHAN’S STUDY – DAY
An interior wall, covered in coloured Post-it notes. At least h
undreds, probably thousands. At the bottom of the wall, fallen notes have collected like a miniature yellow snowdrift.
AVA
(out of shot)
… No.
REVEAL
– the room.
Nathan’s study. A simple space. One part analogue: the wall of Post-its. One part digital: a desk, in the middle of the study, with a bank of monitors, and a slot – into which Nathan’s keycard is inserted.
On the ceiling is the circular window that Caleb saw when he first arrived.
Sitting at the desk, watching the monitors, is Nathan.
CALEB
(out of shot)
Why did you think I was here?
AVA
(out of shot)
I didn’t know. I didn’t question it. I was … pleased. To meet you. And then …
Beside the desk, there is a daybed.
On it, Kyoko lies. Naked. Apparently sleeping.
CALEB
(out of shot)
I’m here to test if you have a consciousness, or if you’re just simulating one.
Beat.
Nathan isn’t sure if you have one or not.
REVEAL
– the monitor screens on the desk.
Some show live feeds from Caleb’s bedroom and bathroom, and Ava’s private room.
AVA
(out of shot)
What about you? Do you think I have a consciousness?
Long beat.
CALEB
(out of shot)
I’m not sure either.
Nathan is watching the feed from the observation room.
Where Ava and Caleb are sitting, either side of the dividing glass. Having the conversation we have been hearing.
We pick up the conversation from Nathan’s distanced and voyeuristic point of view. Locked-off CCTV. Voices played through speakers.
CALEB
(on monitor screen)