by Owen Stanley
“Okay, Mr. I Don’t Read Novels, you got those right somehow, though I have absolutely no idea how you managed it. How are you with maths?”
“Superlative.”
“We’ll see about that. What is 3,968,514 multiplied by 6,721,537?”
“Well, that’s quite difficult.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it is. Got any idea about the answer?”
“26,674,513,686,018.”
“Sorry, Mr. Meadows. That’s not the answer my calculator gives,” Blunt said, with a savage smile, as he waved the device triumphantly.
The audience groaned. Miss Price made a sad clown face. But Frank only shook his head.
“Then your calculator is wrong, or as is much more likely the case, you just entered the numbers incorrectly. Try it again, more slowly this time.”
Jason, red-faced and embarrassed, did so, very slowly. He stared at the little screen for a long moment, then held it up to the camera. He was, after all, a showman, and no matter what, the show must go on. “Well, I guess you’re right after all, Mr. Meadows.”
The audience rocked with uproarious laughter and gleeful shouts of delight. All three of Frank’s fellow guests stood up and applauded.
“Of course I’m right.”
“Cocky little shit, aren’t you?”
“That’s not a very polite way to speak to a guest on your show,” Frank said, to loud audience applause.
“You don’t like that, huh?” Blunt’s eyes were wild. “How would you like me to come over there and give you a big slap?”
“I don’t think I’d even notice, Jason.”
Enraged, Jason leapt out of his chair, charged at Frank, and tried to put him in a headlock.
Frank reached out with a straight arm, seized Jason by his collar in a merciless grip, lifted him up with his feet off the floor, carried him back to his chair and dropped him in it, before going back to his seat, to immense audience applause and laughter, while Jason sat crying with tears of humiliation running down his cheeks. “Would you like to borrow my handkerchief?” asked Frank.
“No, I’d just like someone to give me a hand out of here!”
“Sure, no problem.” Frank stood up, walked over to him, unlocked his right hand with a twist of the wrist socket, and gave it to Blunt, who stared at it for a moment, then fainted. Frank bent over and retrieved his hand, locked it back into place, and bowed to his fellow guests and the audience, who were all sitting in stunned silence.
“I didn’t mean to upset Mr. Blunt. I am sorry about that. By now, you will all have probably realised that I’m not actually a human being at all. I am a robot, which is why I have certain advantages of an unexpected kind, like being able to remove my own hands. I am actually here by courtesy of Mr. Harry Hockenheimer, my creator, whom I should like to introduce now.”
Frank held out his hand in welcome to the wings, from where Harry walked onto the set, smiling and waving. The audience, as one, rose to their feet and applauded him very nearly as enthusiastically as if he had just scored the winning run in a Test Match.
“Good evening, everyone. I’m Harry Hockenheimer, and I’m responsible for Mr. Meadows here. Oh, and could somebody please give poor Jason here a glass of water?” A stagehand appeared with one, and the wretched Jason drank it sheepishly.
“Never mind, Jason, you can’t expect to meet superman every day. Not really a fair contest, was it? But I have to tell you all, ladies and gentlemen, that this is an evening you’ll never forget, a historic event. For the first time ever a robot has demonstrated in public that it can’t just convincingly pass for a human being, but a superhuman being.”
“My company, Serious Cybernetics, will soon be bringing out a range of robots like Frank here to serve as personal assistants for top rank executives, who as well as having limitless knowledge at their disposal for your business, can also double very effectively as personal bodyguards, as you have just seen. If you want to preorder your very own metal man, go to seriouscybernetics.com. We’re looking to go into production in about six to nine months and we’re expecting a massive early run on orders, so be sure to get yours in now! Thank you all very much, and good night!” as he and Frank left the set to tremendous applause.
Harry realised that there would not be many potential customers for superhuman robots in that studio audience, but relied, quite correctly, on the sensational nationwide publicity that would be generated and which would be worth many millions in free advertising.
Those who expect justice in this world would, as usual, have been disappointed by what happened to Jason Blunt. Far from waking up next morning as a broken man, and being reduced to running a Punch-and-Judy show on Brighton Beach, the odious creature found that, like Frank, he had become a national celebrity overnight. His ratings soared, the network and his sponsors, especially Secret Provocateur, were delighted, and he was given a second, hour-long show to host. This involved Jason’s agents being sent around the country to search for the most cantankerous, opinionated and obnoxious guests they could find for his chat show, who could be relied upon to load each other with vitriolic abuse which frequently descended to on-air fist-fights and brawls, and in which Jason himself was repeatedly humiliated to the delight of the studio audience. The new show was called Kick in the Teeth, and it soon had spin-offs in the States and Australia, as well as an exceptionally sadistic Japanese version.
Laugh a Minute was a favourite programme at the Drunken Badger, and the regulars were watching it in the bar as usual, when, to their amazement their own Frank Meadows appeared among the guests. They booed Jason Blunt when he was rude to Frank and cheered Frank when he got all the questions right with effortless superiority. But when he removed his own hand and revealed himself as a robot, they were stunned, and for some minutes there was general pandemonium in the bar.
Gradually, however, things calmed down, and they began to exchange reminiscences about their robotic friend, particularly his phenomenal performance with the darts, and someone reflected that his handling of Bugger Barnsley had been pretty superhuman too, come to think of it. By the end of the evening, the good folk of Tussock’s Bottom did not descend on Harry with scythes and pitchforks to burn him and his creation, but instead felt extremely proud of having them in their village and putting it in the international map.
The only glum note was sounded by Andrew, who warned everyone who would listen, “Mark my words, them robots is going to start poppin’ up everywhere soon and none of us the wiser until it’s too late. We’ll wake up one morning and find we’ve all been murdered in our beds!”
Chapter XIII
Following Frank’s sensational introduction on TV, the John Stuart Mill Society, the oldest, but now the smallest, student club at the London School of Politics, invited him to come and address them on the importance of freedom of speech to science and society.
This was a rather daring decision under the circumstances, as free speech was now considered very nearly as offensive to the students at the London School of Politics as colonialism and slavery, and the Student Union regularly denounced science as racist, sexist, and ethnocentric, so the invitation did not go down at all well.
Godfrey Sunderland was particularly outraged that all the good work of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee in thwarting the obscene Serious Cybernetics project had proven futile, as Hockenheimer had treacherously dared to go ahead and do it behind their backs regardless. He considered organizing a riot in protest at the invitation, but decided instead to get the Student Union to hold an emergency meeting to consider the no-platforming of Meadows, and invited all of his fellow Committee members except Nkwandi to come along for moral support.
As it happened, the committee members were far from the only non-students at the meeting. Members of the administration and the faculty were required to attend as a mark of respect, although they were not permitted to vote, had to sit at the back, and could only speak with permission of the chair.
However, before the emergency
meeting could get properly underway, an urgent procedural issue first had to be settled. A proposal had been made that loud and potentially upsetting noises such as cheering and whooping to express approval should be banned because they had a deleterious impact on some sensitive students. Indeed, those of an especially timid disposition were liable to suffer nervous breakdowns when exposed even the noise of clapping, whereas members of the deaf community, through no fault of their own, were unable to hear any applause and were therefore marginalised and excluded.
It was therefore suggested students would be encouraged to use so-called “jazz hands,” waving their hands back and forth in the air, to express approval, as this was felt to be more inclusive of the deaf community in particular. Those who refused to accept such guidance were warned they would suffer consequences. The prospect of banning something which all normal people took for granted was sufficiently enticing to attract a great deal of support, until one notably querulous student by the name of Nigel Hawtrey, who announced himself to be an activist for the visually challenged, rose to his feet and furiously denounced the proposal as an act of genocide against the blind community, who obviously couldn’t see people waving their hands. He demanded that they should instead be allowed to applaud by blowing vuvuzelas, which would have the added benefit of expressing solidarity with their oppressed South African brothers as well.
Mr. Hawtrey could actually see as well as anyone else, so his activism on behalf of the blind was deemed highly commendable.
As there seemed little possibility of resolving this dispute within the next few hours, it was resolved to establish an Applause Committee to look into it further and to move on to the main item on the agenda.
Godfrey began the debate by denouncing Frank Meadows as a racist and sexist project that insulted every minority and marginalised community in the country, a squalid and perverted icon of American capitalism that he and his colleagues on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee had been trying to prevent from its very beginning. The invitation by the John Stuart Mill Society for Frank Meadows to come to the London School and dictate to its students about science and free speech was the final insult, at which the audience erupted in cheers. The great mass of the students, of course, were already used to chanting “Free speech is hate speech” and “Reason is racist,” on every possible occasion and regarded the whole idea of “objectivity” as a white supremacist myth. Godfrey’s friends on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee were keen to take a leading part in the debate, and objections that as non-students they should not be allowed to participate were at once dismissed as typical of a divisive bourgeois mindset.
Aminah Khan thereupon stood up and gave a moving speech denouncing science, particularly the Satanic theory of evolution and the idea that the earth revolves around the sun, both of which she informed the students contradicted the Koran and were extremely offensive to all good Muslims. She was heard with deep respect and much nodding of heads, especially by some of the senior faculty present.
The President of the Student Union, a Nigerian girl by the name of Ability Eshupkofo, followed her and declared that Ms. Khan had not gone nearly far enough, and that all Western so-called science was not only immoral, but racist, due to its tendency to contradict African traditional folk beliefs, particularly the idea that the earth was flat. Science was a bastion of Western ethnocentrism and bigotry, full of white male supremacists who taught contempt for witchcraft, magic, voodoo, mutu, shamanism, and other similar repositories of wisdom of color around the world.
As it happened, Miss Eshupkofo was a member of a special committee of the Student Union, which had been working for some time to compile a list of great seventeenth- and eighteenth-century African philosophers and scientists to be included in the new diversity curriculum which was being prepared for the School. But since none of these legendary figures had actually been able to read or write, if they had ever lived at all, the task had proved to be a challenging one. Fortunately, the members of the committee were not hampered by old-fashioned Western notions of scholarly integrity, and solved the problem by the clever device of simply improvising whatever writings they were sure must have existed.
“We have to face it,” said Godfrey, “The whole idea of science is racist and classist and sexist. It’s been nothing more than an excuse for white bourgeois males to impose their worldview on the rest of us, as you say, and denigrate the beliefs of the world of color in particular. They even try to claim that the ancient Greeks were white, when we all know they were black Africans, like the Egyptians, the British Romans, and me.”
Percy Crump joined in loudly, demanding that Frank be no-platformed without any more delay. “Of course it’s everyone’s basic human right to express xem’s own opinions, but this freedom must not be abused to allow right-wing racist reactionaries like Frank Meadows and the John Stuart Mill Society to express outdated and perverse opinions, which we have a duty to suppress in every way possible. Liberty is not the same as licence!”
In the end, it was agreed that Frank Meadows was to be no-platformed by the Student Union as an offensive provocation to the student body, and that the School would be required to abolish the John Stuart Mill Society as well. This vote was greeted with much jazz-handing and the blowing of Nigel Hawtrey’s vuvuzela. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Vice-Chancellor timidly asked the Union President for permission to speak, which was curtly granted.
“My colleagues and I have listened to your very informative discussion with the greatest interest and respect. You all really must be congratulated for preserving the integrity of the School by protesting against the visit of this monstrous creation of American capitalism to the campus. As one of you said, the right of genuine free speech must not be abused by allowing the spread of perverted ideas, and we agree that it would be in the best traditions of the School to prevent this visit going ahead. We also entirely agree with your view that the John Stuart Mill Society itself has become outdated, and is dedicated to opinions that are not in line with the more enlightened and progressive values of today, and are therefore a threat to the harmony of our community here at the London School. I guarantee that a motion to abolish it will be on the agenda at the next Council meeting!”
The students jazz-handed politely. They were not as enthusiastic as the Vice-Chancellor had hoped they would be, mostly because they were so used to the Administration caving in to their every demand anyway.
“So,” he continued, " If we can put all this unpleasant business of the robot behind us, I am pleased to be able to inform you that the School has formally invited the great French philosopher, Professor Marcel Choux, to receive an Honorary Doctorate, and I just learned this morning that he has graciously accepted our invitation and will be attending a special Degree Ceremony in his honour next month.”
This news was greeted with considerably more enthusiastic jazz-handing by the students, and by the members of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee as well, for Marcel Choux was a hero to many of them. Choux’s revolutionary philosophy advocated the abolition of the notion of truth, and had thereby acquired immense prestige in the intellectual circles of Paris, so much so that he had already been made a member of the Académie Française and a Knight of the Légion d’Honneur. The London School of Politics prided itself on being in close touch with the French intellectual avant garde, so its Honorary Doctorate for Professor Choux was as predictable as grass bending before the wind. The whole idea of truth had become increasingly suspect at the School, among the faculty as well as the students, as potentially sexist, racist and imperialist, so the Vice-Chancellor’s news of Choux’s visit was greeted with considerably more enthusiasm by everyone in the Hall, and the meeting broke up in a spirit of true progressive bonhomie.
Special Degree Ceremonies for conferring Honorary Doctorates were a feature of the School, and it was customary for the honorand to deliver a lecture on these occasions, so the words of Professor Choux were eagerly anticipated by students and facul
ty alike. Outside the academic bubble, however, the visit of the distinguished philosopher attracted no attention whatsoever, whereas Frank was given heroic status by the tabloids as a victim of lefty student insanity. Tom Bailey, the lead anchor of Independent News, had even given him a long interview in which he simply reiterated the standard view that science and democratic government obviously depended on respect for the truth and following the evidence wherever it led, and that it was amazing that an institution of higher learning would prevent him coming and saying something so obvious to its students.
A few weeks later Vice-Chancellor Hackett formally welcomed Professor Choux to the Degree Ceremony in the Great Hall of the School. “When we consider the discipline of modern philosophy, we recognise that no nation has given brighter jewels to the world than our beloved France. We have only to think of Sartre, Lyotard, Foucault, Marcuse, Derrida, Baudrillard, and Onfray, and today we salute the great mind of Marcel Choux, perhaps the brightest jewel of all. His profound idea which has electrified us all is the perception that truth itself is the root of oppression and discrimination because belief in the truth inevitably means that the believer is claiming to be right, so that other people must be wrong. A new form of class struggle is immediately generated, a vicious system of intellectual oppression in which the weak are mercilessly marginalised as ‘mistaken’. Obviously, we cannot build a world of inclusiveness and mutual respect on such a profoundly divisive and oppressive foundation. As Professor Choux has so brilliantly demonstrated to us, on the personal level this inevitably leads to odious forms of intimidation, such as attempts to prove that other people’s arguments are wrong, or to show that their facts are mistaken, while on the group level it leads inevitably to fascist ideas of correctness. Indeed, his audacious originality goes further and observes that the intellect itself is the basis of claims to truth, and so is itself a form of power. Simply being cleverer or more articulate than other people is really a type of micro-aggression, which reaches its most obnoxious extreme in the practice of teaching.