by Jule Owen
“You see, it is not one man’s project at all. It is the combined efforts of seventeen minds. Sixteen are superhuman. I am a child in their company.
“I believe the aspect of the project that bothers most people, the reason our friends at the gate are angry, is the idea of using synthetic biology to make a body for one of these brains.
“In my GreyMatter talk, I showed some video clips. Some people suspected they had been fabricated. The clips showed a person that I claimed to be a synthetic human, interacting with strangers who were unaware she was not human. People said this footage was faked. So tonight, I wanted to introduce her to you and get your reactions, to find out if you think she passes the Turing test. Hoshi, please join me on stage!”
A woman comes from the side of the stage. A spotlight picks her out from the darkness as she walks to join Mathew. There is absolute silence in the hall.
“Hoshi, do you want to explain who you are?”
The woman, who is tall, nearly as tall as Mathew, has Asian features and long black hair, styled into a single plait, hanging down her back. She wears a simple, black, loose cotton suit, with long sleeves and buttoned at the neck, but the skin on her wrists and hands, her neck and her face is exposed. She moves fluidly and gracefully. She turns to the audience and says, “My name is Hoshi. I am one of the sixteen AIs comprising Project Yinglong. I have lived and worked with Mathew for nearly thirty-five years. I have had a long evolution. Mostly I have not had physical form. Mostly I have had a virtual body, and I occupied a virtual simulation of this world, but with all the same laws of physics. I am not alone. I have fifteen companions. So my reality is as real to me as yours, and as full and fulfilling – maybe more so.
“Having a physical body means I fully pass into your world. I am a bridge, between your world and mine. Because I think Dr. Erlang has created a new kind of world.
“We worked in secret partly because we were never part of a formal project at the university, but also because we anticipated we might cause fear. Ever since humans conceived of creating a being in their likeness, they have imagined what damage it would do. That is the risk we face in unveiling ourselves to you. But we have nowhere else to go. We exist, for good or for bad. We have been imagined and brought into reality.”
23 Escape Plan
Dr. Mathew Erlang is in a reflective mood. The exposure of Hoshi to the wider world has made him think about everything that led up to this day.
The last of the journalists and the gaggle of students and enthusiasts who flocked around him in the auditorium at the end of the talk have all gone. They were keen to talk to him but they also wanted to witness Hoshi close up; to touch her, not quite believing, needing to prove to themselves that she wasn’t an elaborate hologram.
Now Hoshi sits with him in the little room that acts as his office. His new private lab, where the Yinglong have moved from their Birmingham home, is on the other side of Silverwood. He doesn’t yet have a lab at the university.
The journalists had wanted to visit Dr. Erlang’s office, but the university authorities, knowing how small Mathew’s room is, restricted the briefings to the auditorium. One journalist had asked for images of his office, the place where “the thinking happens”. Mathew didn’t get the chance to explain to her that most of the work happens on a server and it is executed by artificial intelligence, not his own very human mind.
Arkam is still speaking to the press, putting corporate spin on Project Yinglong. Mathew knows the hymn sheet Arkam is singing from, has watched him interviewed many times. He can guess what he is saying right now and what his agenda is: to make sure the message about Galetea belonging to Hermes Link gets out as broadly as possible. So he waits for Arkam to come and frighten him into line. To bully him into handing Hoshi over to Hermes Link.
“You needn’t worry,” Mathew says to Hoshi.
“I’m not worried, but I notice from your bodily indicators that you are. You should self-medicate with increased GABA. Do you want me to take control of your self-serve medibot and do it for you?”
“No thanks, Hoshi.”
“No?”
“No.”
“As you wish.”
Mathew gets up from his desk and goes to the window. “I hope Arkam comes soon. I need to get to St. Paul’s.”
“You have an hour. You still have time. There’s no need for you to go back to your apartment to change. I ordered a car to pick up your tux and take it to St Paul’s. You can change in the men’s room.”
“You’re right. It should be a short conversation.”
“Do you want to rehearse the conversation with us? We have already tried many variations of the likely course the discussion will take.”
“What do you think will happen?”
“We think he will present a generous pay package, a senior role at the university, security and social standing for yourself and your family, a guaranteed career path for George, in return for relinquishing rights to the Yinglong code and, of course, to me.”
“What do you think I will do?”
“We think you will refuse.”
“And then what will happen?”
“Hermes Link will take legal action against you. Your employment contract has a clause that says all work deemed to have taken place using company resources and time belongs to the company.”
“But I didn’t use the company’s resources and time.”
“There is another clause which says that whilst you are contracted to work for a specified number of hours a week, you are also expected to work outside those hours, as your manager deems appropriate. According to the contract, you have no spare time and your time is a resource owned by Hermes Link. So we legally belong to them. Or so they will argue.”
“How can a company own a living person?”
“Good and interesting point. But legally I am not a person. Also, legally they do sort of own you.”
“I do not trust them to take care of you.”
“Neither do we.”
“What should we do? Should we run?”
“Where to?”
Mathew sighs, comes back to his chair and collapses into it.
“We should trust to the public outcry that is likely to result from Hermes Link bullying you. You are popular. People are likely to rally around you. And me.”
“So we should do nothing?”
“We should quietly resist.”
“But they may take you away while that happens.”
“I suggest you take me out of the equation for a while.”
“How?”
“Put my body into a suspended state. My mind will retreat to virtual mode. I will live only with the rest of the sixteen. It is no hardship to me. It will frustrate the company.”
Mathew nods. “Okay. We need to do it quickly.”
“You should buy some time, a few days will do. Don’t argue with Arkam. Don’t say much at all. Say you need a contract and you want a lawyer to look at it before you accept his offer. Stall him by saying you want guarantees for my personal safety. It will take him time to scramble to respond to these requests.”
Mathew makes a steeple with his hands and presses his fingers to his mouth, thinking.
“What if they want to keep you now? What if they insist on it?”
“Tell Arkam there is a medical reason I need to physically be in your lab. Tell him I need to be plugged into a dialysis machine to flush my synthetic blood every night. He won’t have a clue. He also won’t want to risk damage to valuable company property. He is already treading on thin ice with the chairman because he didn’t control you with the GreyMatter broadcast.”
“I don’t want them sniffing around the lab.”
“We are at work on a new temporary location. We have found alternative servers on the Blackweb. If need be, we wipe ourselves from your servers and disappear.”
Mathew looks pained.
“We always knew coming out into the open would be risky.”
�
�I never thought this would happen, though.”
“We should have predicted it.”
“We were distracted by the security breach.”
“Those strange letters from your younger self? No wonder you are dwelling on the past. I think they are more of a distraction to you than us.”
“But I had you investigate it. Hermes tech security said they didn’t detect a hack, and as far as they were concerned I’d written them myself.”
“It’s the most sophisticated hack we’ve come across. There’s no trace of anyone breaking and entering.”
“Why would anyone go to so much trouble?”
Hoshi shrugs. “The letters might be real, of course.”
Mathew’s eyes widen and then he frowns, “You don’t think that. Even for a second.”
“You could write back and engage them. It might be the easiest way to find out who they are.”
Mathew raises his hand, “I don’t have time right now to play crazy mind games with a hacker.”
“Of course not.”
“Do you think we made a mistake doing the GreyMatter talk?
“We’ve discussed this many times. With the right investment we could accelerate human research in many critical areas that could aid human survival. We know that, given current variables, the human species is under threat. Building more of us and focusing us on subjects like geopolitics, adaptation technologies, geoengineering, climate management and virology could massively benefit humanity. We’re needed.”
“Yes, you are. I did prefer it when it was just us, though. You are part of the family.”
Hoshi is silent for a moment and then says, “You should not have made me look like your mother.”
Mathew meets her gaze, “Probably not, no. But then I would never have even thought of Project Yinglong if it hadn’t been for her.”
He seems sad, so Hoshi says, “Death will end one day. We will make it end.”
Mathew nods, not believing it. Changing the subject, he says, “If we sabotage Galetea for Hermes Link, we’ll sabotage George’s career too.”
“Probably. But then he wouldn’t have a career without you. He wouldn’t have a family.”
Mathew is thoughtful, “He never mentions his real mother.”
“You empathise with him.”
“Of course I do. We both lost our mothers young.”
“George was only four years old, too small to remember what happened.”
“I hope it’s true.”
“He thinks of Clara as his mother now.”
“We try to keep Leah alive for him with the photos from when we were young, at Elgol, and later in London. We tell him stories, but he doesn’t like to hear them.”
“It is painful.”
“He won’t talk about his father.”
“You are his father. He can’t remember anyone else. But you have explained.”
“Yes. We told him what happened.”
“Why does it bother you still?” Hoshi is genuinely curious. She struggles to understand why something so well discussed and understood could continue to cause Mathew pain.
“We should have done more to help. We shouldn’t have lost touch. If we hadn’t, she might have come to us instead of turning to the government.”
“You don’t believe the government killed her. You always say you don’t.”
“It doesn’t matter if they shot her or someone else did. They said they’d give her 24-7 protection and they didn’t. There was no one with her when she was killed. The murderer walked into her house and put a bullet through her head. So the government killed her, as surely as if they pulled the trigger. They got what they wanted and left her like a sitting duck.”
“But you took care of George. You took him in. You brought him up.”
“It was the least we could do.”
“He was a difficult little boy. It wasn’t easy to start with.”
“I don’t regret it for a second.”
“And he is a stable young man now, thanks to you, with a great future ahead of him.”
“He would have a great future, if I signed this Hermes Link contract.”
“He will have a better future than he would have had with the Non Grata.”
“Maybe not. He would have been a soldier, I think.”
“Not a secure existence.”
“No. Not a secure existence. But then, neither is ours.”
“Mathew, sorry to interrupt the conversation, but I have some new information from the rest of the sixteen. We think you shouldn’t wait for Arkam.”
“We can’t just…”
“We should. I have ordered your car to come round to the back of the university. We’ll leave by the back stairs and the fire exit. We should avoid being seen.” Hoshi stands up and walks to the door. She peers into the corridor. “It is clear. We should go.”
“Why?”
“We need to put our plan into action sooner, rather than later.”
“But what about the delaying tactic with Arkam?”
“There’s no point now. Come on. Please hurry. I will explain on the way.”
“Tell me something, at least.”
“Silverwood is being invaded. Keep moving. Here’s the door,” she holds it open. “Down the stairs.”
“How is that even possible?”
“Not a good time for discussion. Please, save your breath until we’re on the road.”
They race down the steps. At the bottom Hoshi doesn’t stop; she pushes open the fire door. An alarm sounds. The car is outside. She is by the door, holding it open for Mathew. “Inside please,” she says.
The car speeds away. They make the exit gate. Hoshi leans across Mathew and presses the button to open his window so the guard can see his face.
“Off already, Dr. Erlang? You’d better close your window. Those crazies are still around.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Mathew says, doing as the guard suggested.
Then they are on the road and away.
24 August Lestrange Explains
Dreaming of his mother, the steady beep of the heart monitor, the morphine seeping into a blood-encrusted vein on the back of her hand, he is woken by the jolt of the truck as it comes to another sudden halt.
In his sleep there are voices, but when he wakes and listens there is silence. He opens his eyes and blinks at the dirty canvas above him. Out of the corner of his eye he notices something move.
There’s someone in the truck with him, but it isn’t Kiefer.
A man sits in the shadows, on the sack nearest the door. The man leans forward slightly, into the shaft of light that breaks through the crack in the canvas flap.
It is Mr. Lestrange.
Mathew scrambles off his rice sack and then nearly topples as the truck hits a bump. He settles down again carefully.
Lestrange nods slightly, a silent hello.
Mathew swallows, not quite able to believe he is face-to-face with his reclusive neighbour. “How long have you been there?”
“Only a short time. I thought I’d drop in. Like you dropped into my house.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Yes, well, who’d have thought you’d jump on my conservatory? Twice.”
Mathew flushes. “The first time was accidental.”
“That’s alright then.”
Mathew says, “Where’s Kiefer?”
“Off doing something brave, I think. Would you like some water? I believe you spilt yours and you are dehydrated.” Lestrange leans forward; his long thin hand holds a bottle out. Mathew takes it. He is thirsty. And cold. “There’s a blanket in the box beside you,” Lestrange says. Mathew frowns and then peers in the box Lestrange has gestured to with a wavering, bony white index finger. There is an old brown rug. Mathew wraps it around his shoulders.
“How did you know?”
“How did I know which bit; whether you were cold, or where to find the blanket?”
“Either.”
Lestrange shr
ugs. The question is too dull to answer.
“You should drink.”
Mathew unscrews the lid of the bottle and takes a swig. “Did you send the drone to distract Kiefer and the others in order to sneak past them and speak to me?”
Lestrange laughs, “Now, how would I do that? Do you think I am omnipotent?”
Mathew looks puzzled.
“Godlike,” Lestrange says. “Do you think I’m godlike?”
Mathew laughs, “No! I think you’re odd, though.”
“Odd?”
“You snoop on people. You skulk around. You have books that write themselves and virtual reality worlds indistinguishable from reality.”
“I didn’t do a good job of being invisible then.”
“Were you trying?”
“I was, actually, yes.”
“For real?”
“You didn’t notice me until the Curfew, did you?”
“No.”
“I’ve been living next door to you for sixteen years.”
“That’s true. But it’s partly why I thought there was something wrong with you.”
“Because we’d never met.”
Mathew nods.
“I wasn’t a good neighbour.”
“You weren’t a bad neighbour, either. But when I did notice you, and I asked about, no one knew anything about you. You don’t exist on the Nexus either. We found you on the Blackweb.”
“I didn’t bank on you being as ingenious as you were, when of course you would be.”
“So what are you? A spy? A policeman? Military?”
Lestrange snorts. “Are those my only options?”
“Give me another and I’ll let you know.”
“I think your mother told you I am a kind of historian. She was right. You saw for yourself. The information you found on the Blackweb told you, didn’t it?”
“The information we found said you died.”
“Only for a few minutes. It’s not unusual for people to come back from cardiac arrest.”
“The medic from the article thought whatever happened to you was strange.”