by Nick Gevers
Roderick sighed. “I ought to marry a woman called Lucy. Or maybe Lucia. Named for light.”
“Maybe,” said Nancy in a kindly way, “you should simply marry a woman.”
At forty-six, Roderick was perhaps unlikely to. He was affably shambly looking in his person, although obviously there must be a high degree of delicacy to his touch, given the corresponding delicacy of eyes, or vice versa. Maybe the right word was gentleness. But we all knew that he had desired Nancy, in vain. Paradoxically this was one of the strings that united us four. Also, Nancy and I hadn’t had kids. By now Nancy was on the age-cusp of never being able to. My fault: low sperm count—just my bad luck, one of those things. We’d talked about having my sperm mixed with a donor’s in case one of mine, swept along with the crowd, proved to be lucky. But we hadn’t done so. Nancy filled our house with orchids.
Whereas Nick had married his Lucy almost inadvertently, so it seemed. A secretary, originally, at the Department of Astrophysics, she’d become starry-eyed about him. Now they had two teenagers, Philip and Philippa, names that had struck me as a failure of imagination in the domestic department or some peculiar economy measure. Or maybe something dynastic: Nick’s strongwilled barrister father was a Philip.
“Did you know,” said Roderick, “that St. Lucy had beautiful eyes, so she was deoculated as a martyrdom? Her symbol is a pair of eyes on a saucer.”
“That’s squirmy,” protested Nancy. “Doesn’t make it any better by saying deoculated.”
“She’s the patron saint of the blind, but I don’t have her picture in my office. Could be off-putting, hmm?”
“A Lucia mightn’t be well-advised to marry you.”
I noticed that Nancy didn’t say “a Lucy” since Lucy was Nick’s wife, just as Nancy was mine. Probably Roderick had mentioned St. Lucy in the past—the story did ring a bell, though not a loud one; he’d been a lapsed Roman Catholic even in our college days.
Fairly soon it was time for us to go our separate ways, Nancy and I by bus to Summertown, Roderick on foot to his bachelor home in Jericho. And thus it was time for his traditional non-crushing bear-hug of Nancy, and for her to peck him on the cheek.
Out of vague curiosity I looked up St. Lucy. Apart from her beautiful eyes, she was a Christian virgin heiress with a big dowry, ordered to marry a pagan. Her refusal led to her martyrdom. And it occurred to me that in Roderick Butler’s eyes my Nancy might bizarrely classify as some sort of virgin in the sense that I’d never made her pregnant. Consequently he could venerate her? Not exactly . . . more like regard her as a still nubile Venus who happened to be tied to the wrong chap. Or a bit of both.
I recalled a holiday we’d all been on together five years earlier, including Mrs. Nick, although not the kids who opted to stay with her parents for a week; two weeks stuck on a canal in a narrowboat had little appeal for young Philip and Philippa. We could understand why when we arrived at Somerton Deep Lock, which resembled, especially in the rain, a wet version of Doré’s Hell. However, we managed to have a fairly good time, especially at canalside pubs, in one of which I remember a folksinger chap causing Roderick, after several pints, to burst tipsily into a rendition of “Billy Boy,” which goes thus:
Where have you been all the day,
Me Billy Boy?
I’ve been out with Nancy Gray,
And she’s stolen me heart away,
She’s me Nancy, tickled me fancy,
Oh me charmin’ Billy Boy.
Is she fit to be a wife?
me Billy Boy.
She’s as fit to be a wife,
As a fork fits to a knife.
She’s me Nancy, tickled me fancy,
Oh me charmin’ Billy Boy.
Hmm, yes exactly. Nancy tickled me fancy. Is she fit to be a wife?
Afterwards, Roderick’s snores rumbled in the confines of the narrowboat, and in the morning he denied all knowledge. Amnesia due to beer. Nick and Lucy teased him a bit, but Nancy didn’t, nor did I. During that fortnight no love-making occurred due to the limited privacy of our boat, so to Roderick’s subconscious Nancy may have seemed chaste.
When Roderick offered Nancy a state-of-the-art examination at his lab, which would involve him staring deep into her eyes, she diplomatically claimed to have visited Vision Express in town just recently. Roderick included me in this invitation, though more as an afterthought. He didn’t raise the matter again.
What Roderick did raise, when we all met up for another convivial drink, accompanied by a meal, this time in the King’s Arms at the end of Broad Street, was Nick’s assertion that the absence of A.I.s was a big puzzle.
“Didn’t we cover all that last time?” Nancy said. “By the way, what did the gamma ray burst have to say?”
“What it basically said was: tough luck for any life in that galaxy. Well now, I think I said you can forget about the absence of intelligent aliens being a mystery, due to a suitable planet like ours being a one in a zillion chance.”
“Although there still might be brainy aliens far far away?” I chipped in. “On the principle that someone has to win a lottery now and then, given billions of galaxies?”
“Too far away ever to be known to us. Or too distant in time. Or both.”
“Yet immortal A.I.s ought to be everywhere,” said Roderick doggedly.
“Or at least some sign of them. In my view.”
“In . . . your . . . view,” Roderick repeated, sounding rather as if he was a skeptical tutor addressing a bumptious student. “In your view.”
“Are you taking the piss, by any chance?”
“Absolutely not. A notion came to me . . . I fancy the fish and chips.”
Nick glanced at the chalked menu board. “Good notion!”
It was a year later that Nancy and I received, by the very same post, invitations to a private viewing at the Museum of Modern Art in Pembroke Street, RSVP to email address. The artist: Jon Bell. Title of exhibition: Eye Watch You. Scientific Advisor: Roderick Butler (plus his eminent qualifications). Neatly penned on the printed cards: Hope to see you! RB.
Why send two separate invitations? An error on the part of some secretary at MOMA? It seemed more as if Roderick hoped to ensure that Nancy would pay full attention. And what was Roderick doing mixing with modern art? He hadn’t mentioned any such thing in the meanwhile. Jon Bell was blurbed on the back of the card as a leading techno-conceptual artist with a background in electronics as well as being a graduate of Goldsmiths’ College in London.
I phoned Nick. Yes, he and Lucy had also received an invitation, although Lucy probably wouldn’t be going. An invitation. An. No, Roderick hadn’t let on about this new string to his bow.
I tried to phone Roderick several times to give a verbal RSVP, but in vain. His mobile went to voicemail, and his shared secretary at the Nuffield lab said he wasn’t available.
We’d have to wait and see.
Jon Bell looked the epitome of cool, dressed all in black, which made him seem even more slim and wiry, slim oblong black sunglasses, a ring in his ear and a minimalist black beard, Vandyke- lite. Numerous acolytes or colleagues were present, several with tiny wifi computers on which they tapped, or internet phones with which they shot video clips, so that what was happening was enhancedly happening.
Trays of wine. Some blow- ups around the walls of dissected eyeballs. A beaming Roderick, wearing his professional suit, although with a rakish yellow cravat at his neck.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
“Wait for the show,” he told Nancy, and yes, me too. “I hope you’ll be impressed.”
Occupying the large downstairs gallery, to which we duly trooped, was a huge transparent perspex globe, seated upon a square steel framework, in front of which stood a short flight of steps. A whirr of motors, and the—what was that called again?—yes, the cornea descended to give access to a circular doorway into this enormous eyeball. What was now the upper surface of this access, of blue-green plastic—slim bands of blu
e and green radiating out from a round transparent center—must be the iris, right? Whirring too, a crystalline disk of plastic rose upward within hydraulically: the lens of the eye undoubtedly. As that final obstacle rose, a multi-stranded cable that looked fiber-optic, connecting the midpoint of the lens to the rear of the, oh yes retina, rose up, sagging somewhat. A disc of thick see-through plastic provided a flat floor within to stand upon, for say half a dozen people without crowding . . .
“You’ll notice the resemblance of the eye to an old-style diving bell,” declared Jon Bell. “The humor of Bell’s bell is that it should really be full of liquid! Unlike a true diving bell, which keeps liquid out. You’ll have to imagine that the air inside is liquid. We could of course pump liquid in after it closes up, but then participants would need bathing costumes and oxygen masks. So I omitted that aspect.”
Wineglasses in hand, people laughed appreciatively.
From the back of the eye, corresponding I supposed to the optic nerve, a multitude of optic fibers protruded, many looping around to attach themselves to the rear half of the sphere all over the outer surface, others leading to electronic gear and a computer tower.
The gallery lights dimmed somewhat.
Fish-eye images of us guests upstairs a few minutes earlier—there must have been tiny concealed cameras—and now downstairs (hidden cameras here likewise!) flashed around the interior of the giant eye while we gazed in a sort of childish wonder, and projected out onto the gallery walls distortedly enlarged, bouncing in and out, coalescing, separating, inverting randomly. Faces zoomed in and out, and bits of body, and hands holding wineglasses, quite a few looking like night-vision and also infrared images. What a dizzying dance of visions of ourselves.
Of a sudden Jon Bell clapped his hands.
“Pay ATTENTION, Eye!”
All the images promptly rushed to the back of the eye, forming a mosaic, which quickly became a single curved image of all of us gathered in front. What I’d taken for Lucite must be something smarter, maybe bonded in layers.
I whispered to Nancy, “Do you suppose Roderick put up any of his own money for this?”
“Well, that could be a good investment if Charles Saatchi or some Russian billionaire buys it . . . sort of like Damien Hirst’s Diamond Skull? But, like, why?”
Just at the moment Roderick surged, seized Nancy by the hand with a hasty excuse-me, as if cutting in on a dance floor, and tugged her towards and up the steps on to the cornea hatch, where he paused to call out: “Room for four more inside!” Jon Bell beckoned at three of the prettiest young ladies present and an austere chap who might be an art critic.
As soon as the chosen few were inside the big chamber, the iris descended and the cornea rose.
What my eyes saw from outside was how I imagined a psychedelic trip, not that I’d ever taken LSD or mushrooms or whatnot. The doors of perception opening up, and all that, though for me the hatch was shut; Nancy later confirmed my impression, and she had taken a few naturally occurring substances in the past, which seemed quite allowable for a botanist. To what extent had Roderick arranged all this in order to dazzle and impress her?
But never mind about the dazzling head-trip—or more correctly eye-trip—in company with Roderick. The astonishing thing came after Nancy was back beside me, when Roderick occupied the cornea hatch, lowered once more, and, standing beside Jon Bell who hopped up to join him, made a little speech, filmed to be streamed by the artist’s online cyberchums.
“How do we pay attention to what we see?” Roderick asked. “There’s an almost psychedelic jumble of different lights inside the eye. Blue’s always out of focus, for instance, so how do blue things appear to have sharp edges? It’s because our retina is an extremely sophisticated computer. Hidden away behind a carpet of blood vessels and nerves, as though the system is back-to-front, and almost invisibly transparent, our retina’s as thin as paper, yet it has at least ten different layers of neurons to process and edit and compress information. Some cells can compress to a thousandfold! Our retina is the brain that intervenes between the world and our brain. And because of that, our sight is extraordinarily acute—”
I remembered about seeing a single candle flame at a distance of seventeen miles . . .
“—which of course is how we first made tools, and therefore all of technology subsequently. We talk about hypothetical intelligent aliens out there and we listen with our radio telescopes for decades in vain—no evidence of any, nor that we’ve ever been visited in the past. Yet in our universe there ought to exist one kind of immortal intelligence—and emphatically I’m not referring to a God.”
By now the guests were regarding Roderick in a puzzled, though indulgent, way.
“I mean artificial intelligences brought into existence by intelligent aliens in previous universes and which survive forever from universe to universe, unlike their makers. They ought to be here, even observing us, since intelligent biological life must be very rare. So where are they?
“I declare that I know where they are! They are in the amazing computers of our eyes, the retinas. Not one in each retina, no no, for individual people die or are blinded. The A-Eyes, as I call them,” and he spelled out the word, “are each distributed among millions of individuals, connected by photonic entanglement—”
“But that’s bananas!” Nick exclaimed at me. “Information can’t be conveyed at a distance by entanglement—”
“Shshshsh,” said Nancy.
“They see what we see in mosaic form, time-sharing on our retinal computers while busy with their own computations. This will become evident as we gain more sophisticated insight, yes, you might well say insight, into the retinal computer, which I for my part intend to pursue from now on. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the aliens in our midst, the super-intelligent evolved immortal creations of aliens from another cosmos which preceded ours! They are in your very own eyes! We don’t see the aliens in our universe because it is through those alien intelligences that we perceive!”
Jon Bell and his electronic-art cronies burst into applause, grinning. So did almost all of the audience because this seemed to be yet more of the art event, an authentic happening for dessert. Nancy and I clapped our hands too, so as not to spoil Roderick’s moment of glory, though Nick refrained: “Either he’s lost it totally, or else he’s having us on . . .” And guests queued up to experience a trip in the eye-globe, winking or gazing meaningfully into one another’s eyes.
Afterwards, Roderick accompanied us ebulliently to the Miter in the High Street, at one point linking arms with Nancy who still seemed dazed by the psychedelic visions.
“So how did you team up with this bright new star of Brit Art?” I asked as soon as I’d downed my initial gulp of ale.
“Well now, I needed an art event as a showcase for my revelations in case my medical colleagues thought I’d gone loopy. I wouldn’t have been able to publish this in any orthodox form. Really, we need nanotechnology to validate this, although I’ve applied for a research sabbatical to see what progress I might make.” Roderick chuckled. “Obviously the Nobel Prize is a good way off yet.”
Nick hesitated. “You believe what you said?”
“Dear chap, it’s the answer to your conundrum. But,” he added significantly.
“But?” Nancy obliged by asking.
“Can any of you guess the other reason for an art event that’s quite likely to make a few waves, even more so when it transfers to London?”
Nick made a show of scratching his head. “Um, to get in the news and attract funding from an eccentric billionaire?”
“The news, yes, that’s part of it. Jon says he’s fairly sure Eye Watch You will go viral on YouTube and people’s phones and whatnot. The point is that this is out in the open now, unstoppably. I didn’t want the A.I.s to notice prematurely in case they took exception to being revealed.”
Paranoia . . . ?
“They’d already have seen what you were up to,” I said. �
��I mean, if they exist.”
“Tom,” patiently, “a distributed intelligence can only sample what it sees, say for a few seconds or even microseconds. It wouldn’t exactly read my mind! Yet there’s a point where something can be detected and appropriate measures taken before it’s too late, to suppress information—”
I wondered what measures he had in mind? Blindness? An induced stroke?
“—and beyond that point simply too many people know the idea.”
For a moment I thought Nancy was about to reach out to pat his hand, which Roderick might have misinterpreted. She said gently, “Isn’t this idea of yours a bit like a conspiracy theory? You can present some evidence—as with the fall of the Twin Towers being a controlled demolition—but it can’t be proved, even if it’s plausible. And so the theory soon gets linked up with other far-out ideas that are definitely potty, such as that humanoid lizards secretly rule the Earth. Which devalues the original theory.”
My Nancy had recently read a book about conspiracy theories. According to some energetic chap American presidents and the British royal family were lizard-human hybrids in disguise.
“But I didn’t say anything at all about retinal A.I.s controlling or influencing human behavior.”
“Conspiracists might do so—leading to silliness. I don’t want you to expose yourself to ridicule.” Evidently the rush of excitement caused by her trip in the Eye was giving way to wiser counsels. Yet then she went on, perhaps unadvisedly, “Or . . . are you actually hoping to provoke a proof, on the part of your A.I.s? Rather than protecting yourself, instead: some detectable response?”
At which, a gleam came into Roderick’s eye, as it were!
“The Eye serves several purposes,” he said contentedly. Or did he say “the eye”?