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She could feel the strength of his arms, his hands. If he wanted to, he could kill her with one twist of the neck. It was amazing, how he had developed physically. They must have spent a lot of care with the substrate development. All these thoughts ran through Chal’s mind as she stood, motionless.
Behind him she saw the laboratory door open, and two technicians stood in the doorway. They both had syringes in their hands. Chal raised her hand up behind Alan’s body, motioning for them to stop. No. Don’t come in. They paused and looked at each other, then off to someone else behind the doorway opening. Nodding to an unseen command, they closed the door, leaving Chal alone again with the prototype.
Alan’s fingers ran across her eyebrows, her cheeks. He looked at her with an intense curiosity, entirely enraptured with her face. He hadn’t even noticed the door opening, or hadn’t cared.
“Are you a person?” he asked.
“Yes, I am a person.” Chal nodded slightly, feeling the drips of water trickle down her cheeks and neck.
“Thank you, Chal.” He seemed fascinated by her face. She didn’t know why he was thanking her. He shifted and she saw the IV trailing behind him.
“Please sit back down,” Chal said. She was worried that he would tear out the IV with so much movement.
“Will you sit too?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ll sit too,” she said. He relaxed his grip and sat back down into the tank. She settled on her knees next to the tank so that she could be at face level with him. This worked well with chimpanzees, anyway. She hoped it would work just as well with a person. He seemed to be responding to her statements in an understandable way.
“What is this?” he said, splashing the water.
“It’s water,” she said. The clipboard was abandoned behind her, but this was much more interesting. We should let him play more, she thought. Let him ease into reality on his own.
“Water is not a person,” he said. He looked up at Chal for confirmation.
“No,” Chal said.
“Wonderful,” he said, splashing water all around the tank. He raised his hands, fingers spread wide, and smacked the surface of the water. Some of it splashed over the edge of the tank, right into Chal’s face. She raised her hand to wipe it off, and saw Alan looking at her, concerned.
“Did I hurt you, Chal?” he asked. His voice was timid, and she saw the worry all over his face. Quickly she shook her head no, and smiled to show that she was okay.
“Of course not,” she said. He still looked worried, until she reached over and patted his arm. The IV was starting to drip red, the sedation flowing back into his bloodstream. “Don’t worry.” She wanted to tell the technicians to stop the sedative. She wanted to talk with Alan for much, much longer, see what other language he knew and what kind of language he could develop through discussion. She wanted to play with him and see reality as he saw it. But she knew their conversation had gone on long enough already. It was just too soon for her.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Alan said, traces of nervousness still in his expression.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Everything is okay.”
“Everything is okay,” Alan repeated. His eyelids drooped. “Chal?”
“Yes, Alan?” she asked. His muscles were slumping, and he splashed his fingers listlessly on the water’s surface.
“I’m...” he said. He yawned.
“Sleepy?” Chal felt an irrational desire to lean over and hug him.
“Sleepy,” he repeated softly. He yawned again. “Sleepy.”
“It’s normal,” she said. “It’s normal to be sleepy.”
“Normal,” he whispered, and then the sedative took him over. He floated in the tank exactly as a dead body might have. The lab door opened, and the technicians came in.
***
Chal left the lab and took a deep breath. She watched the assistants load Alan onto the gurney and wheel him out. It had all been too much for her to take in at once, and now that she was out of the room she felt her shoulders slowly beginning to untense. Eyes closed, she stretched her neck, rolling her head around.
“Did it hurt you?” Lieutenant Johnner asked. Chal opened her eyes and saw Johnner and Fielding standing in front of her. She set her face back into an impassive expression.
“No,” she said. “Everything went well.”
“You were supposed to read from the clipboard,” Dr. Fielding said. “How are we supposed to know the extent of his spatial awareness if you don’t ask?”
“Real interaction isn’t a question survey,” Chal said. “Do you want him to develop as a normal person or not?” Johnner and Fielding exchanged a brief look.
“There are certain parameters for questioning,” Dr. Fielding said.
“I know!” Chal cried out, losing her self-control for an instant. The men were quiet. “Don’t you think I know? Why did you call me in here if you aren’t going to listen to what I have to say?”
“You’ve been doing an admirable job,” Lieutenant Johnner said. He raised his arm as though to put it around her consolingly, but she stepped back. He lowered his arm. “I know you’ve been under a lot of stress.”
Men. They always blamed any problem they had with her on how much stress she was undergoing. Chal did well under stressful conditions, thrived under them. She knew from innumerable studies she had read that women were by far more resilient under stressful circumstances than men. Yet they had staffed this underground laboratory with assistants and staff who were all male.
All male. Chal realized that all of the staff she had seen had been male. Every single one. She thought back. Surely there must have been some other woman here. But no. The cook, the military guards, the scientists and technicians – every single person here was a man.
Except her.
She made a mental note to ask Johnner about it the next time they were alone. She didn’t want Dr. Fielding to think that she was uncomfortable in the situation she had been placed in. It was just strange, that was all.
“I think the initial questioning went well,” Chal said, turning back to Dr. Fielding. Focus, Chal. Focus on the specifics. “He had spatial awareness of his body and my own. Did you hear his question about me sitting with him? That was strange. It shows a higher understanding of the connection between individuals than I would have expected. We wouldn’t have gotten that from our questions.”
Now that her mind was back on the experiment, Chal felt her mood lift. There was so much to analyze, so much to go over.
“He was remarkably concerned with the concept of personhood,” Chal said. She was distracted, and didn’t notice the worried look that Johnner and Fielding exchanged between them. “Asking if the water was a person? Dr. Fielding, isn’t that something your language implant would have preprogrammed in?”
“It’s a necessarily vague concept,” Fielding said. “Probably just trying to clarify the boundaries of the definition. The language implant is a very basic structure; it’s just that he picks things up quickly.”
“Very quickly.”
“That’s the goal,” Fielding said drily. “That’s how we programmed him.”
“I would like to see the code you used,” Chal said. “And we’ll have to keep an eye out in the future for this kind of language use.” She was trying to remember the exact words Alan had used.
“The most important thing, though,” Fielding said, “was that the prototype acknowledged its own mental states.”
“That’s right,” Chal said, thinking back to the end of the session. “He said that he was sleepy.”
“And?” Johnner asked. “Isn’t that interesting? Not quite an emotional state, but...”
“Interesting, but not unexpected,” Chal said. “Children are remarkably self-involved. The most surprising aspect was his concern for my well-being, actually. That’s a mature thought to have.”
“Do you think you can talk with him next time about his emotions?” Johnner asked.
“I’ll write up
some questions to be used,” Fielding said, glancing at Chal. “If that’s alright with you.”
“Sure,” Chal said. “But I’d like the sessions to stay as unstructured as possible. I think it’s healthier for his development. Which is quite accelerated, don’t you think?”
“It’s how we programmed him,” Fielding said again. “There are still skills and information his neural structure will eventually unpack, but the learning takes place very quickly.”
“Unpack?” Chal said. “How much information are we talking about?”
“That is classified,” Johnner interrupted. He wore a strange look on his face, and Chal thought it best not to press the issue. There would be plenty of time to examine the information once she was given access to the program’s code.
Fielding gave a curt nod. “I’ll see you both for the next awakening.”
He left quickly and Lieutenant Johnner followed.
If Chal noticed Dr. Fielding’s change in attitude, she didn’t acknowledge it. It was nice that he was being a bit more deferential to her authority, even if it took yelling at him to accomplish it. Maybe Lieutenant Johnner had intervened on her behalf. If all of the men around her wanted to just get out of her way and let her do her thing, that would be fine.
Just fine.
***
CHAPTER TEN
“People think of these eureka moments and my feeling is that they tend to be little things, a little realisation and then a little realisation built on that.” -Roger Penrose
***
Chal sat in the substrate lab, the octopus tank at the far end of the room. One of the octopi had climbed onto the water filter and hung in front of it by a single tentacle, letting itself be pushed back and forth by the current. It was playing, Chal thought. No time for that.
It would be another eight hours before the next awakening, and she wanted to analyze all of the previous tapes to see what, if anything, she had missed. Now that she was able to talk to Alan, there were a thousand things to ask. She must make sure to prioritize the most important questions while still leaving room for him to explore.
She began with the previous prototype questioning, since those sessions were only a couple of minutes long. She replayed the awakening with Dr. Fielding, studying the prototype carefully.
"I am Dr. Fielding."
"You are Dr. Fielding."
"That is correct." Chal leaned forward, watching the prototype watch Dr. Fielding. His eyes never left the doctor’s face.
“Who are you?” Dr. Fielding continued.
“I–”
Chal winced again as the prototype reached down and pulled out the IV, spraying blood everywhere. Then he was thrashing all over the screen, Dr. Fielding trying in vain to restrain him.
“I am malfunctioning!”
“AH! AH! AH! AH!–”
There was silence, and Chal reached forward to restart the recording at the moment everything went wrong.
“Who are you?”
“I–”
Chal paused the recording. There was something off about the prototype, she thought. Something different, lacking. In all of her time with Alan, she hadn’t felt this way. She stared at the prototype sitting in the chair. He looked exactly like Alan, and although she knew there were minor incongruities, the two prototypes biologically were twins. But there was something different about this one.
He seemed inhuman.
Chal pressed play. The prototype looked down at his arm and pulled out the IV. She paused the tape. The prototype’s face was completely impassive, even with blood already soaking his body. He had to have felt the pain from the IV. Why wasn’t he reacting?
She pressed play. Dr. Fielding reached over and touched the prototype’s arm.
There.
She replayed the video and paused it at the same spot.
That was it. The prototype hadn’t recognized his own body as an individual entity until that moment. Chal’s eyes narrowed. What if?
She replayed the entire recording from the beginning once, then again, until she was sure of what she saw.
The prototype hadn’t been aware of himself until the moment Dr. Fielding touched him. In fact, he might have identified himself with Dr. Fielding. From the very outset, his eyes never left the doctor’s face. He wasn’t aware of his own body at all: he never played with his fingers or touched himself. It was only when the doctor reached over and touched him that all hell broke loose.
It made sense – the prototype ran into a mental paradox as soon as the doctor touched his body. It was the same reason you couldn’t tickle yourself – people had an innate sense of the limits of their bodies, and expected touches felt completely different than unexpected touches, even if the actual physical sensation was the same. The touch by Dr. Fielding had short-circuited that neural connection, and the prototype’s mind had broken down.
Chal quickly put in the second videorecording. It was the exact same problem. Dr. Fielding, sitting directly in front of the prototype’s vision in bright light. Of course they had identified with the face in front of them. It was the same problem she had dealt with in her earlier experiments. Babies needed time to adjust to the concept that they possessed bodies.
She was about to turn her attention to the most recent recordings when Dr. Fielding came into the lab. He was carrying a laptop.
“Lieutenant Johnner told me to give this to you,” Dr. Fielding said.
“Thanks,” Chal said. She opened her mouth, then closed it. There was no reason to tell him about her findings. As much as she wanted to share her discovery with someone else, she thought that Dr. Fielding would not appreciate her explaining exactly how he had gone wrong with his questioning. She opened the laptop instead.
“There’s a password?” she asked.
“Last four digits of your social security,” Dr. Fielding said.
“Thanks,” Chal said. She quickly navigated to her email and scanned the inbox for anything important. Dr. Fielding took out a cage full of mice and set it on the table opposite Chal. As she typed a hasty reply about the conditions of an experiment she had started before leaving, she watched him out of the corner of her eye.
His movements were slow and sharply efficient. After setting the mouse cage down, he went to the back and retrieved a rack of stoppered test tubes, each marked with a bright orange biohazard sticker. He took them out one by one, handling them with extreme care, and put them in a centrifuge.
“Are you keeping an eye on me, Dr. Fielding?” Chal asked.
Dr. Fielding smiled coldly.
“I’m running the weekly tests on our interferon serum, Dr. Davidson,” he said. “If my presence bothers you, you may certainly leave.”
“No thanks,” Chal said. “I was just curious.”
Chal turned back to her email. The first page was full of bothersome nonsense, advice from unsolicited professors interspersed with a few offers of interviews. Then a flurry of emails from her work. There had been a delay in one of the experiments due to a shortage of a compound used in the biological substrate. She went to look up an acceptable substitute, and couldn’t – the page she knew the information was on wouldn’t load. She went to another site and encountered the same error.
“What sites are blocked?” Chal asked. Dr. Fielding looked up from his work.
“What sites aren’t?” he said, shrugging. “But what can you do?”
“I can’t get to the information I need,” Chal said. She had been so excited to get access to the outside world, and now it looked like the only thing that would load was her email. She clicked on the home page from her email itself. Nothing.
“It’s the military,” Dr. Fielding said, which was both a complete explanation and no explanation at all. A light went on, and the centrifuge slowed. He took out one of the test tubes. The contents had separated into two layers of thin gray liquid, small black residue at the bottom of the tube.
“What is that?” Chal asked, pushing her email aside. God, it was
so frustrating.
Dr. Fielding took out a syringe and inserted it into the test tube.
“It’s a kind of interferon,” he said. “We manufacture it ourselves here.”
“What does it do?” Chal asked.
“It inhibits neuronal connection cell growth,” Dr. Fielding said. As Chal watched, he reached a white-gloved hand into the cage. All of the mice scattered around, trying to escape. He caught one in the corner of the cage and wrapped his fingers around it, pulling it out.
“Isn’t that the opposite of what we’re trying to do?” Chal said. “You’re in the business of growing brains, not destroying them.”
“I’m not in business,” Dr. Fielding said, sniffing at the assumption. “I’m strictly a scientist. Learning is everything, whether in creation or destruction.”
He brought the mouse down onto the lab table. Its pink feet scraped against the metal tabletop. Dr. Fielding picked up the syringe.
“We’ve learned, for example, that this particular interferon only takes seconds to stop the production of new neurons,” he said. Chal watched as he pushed the syringe into the mouse’s lateral abdomen and injected the liquid inside. He put the mouse back down on the table.
The mouse wanted to escape, Chal could tell, but it was already paralyzed. It would start out in one direction, then freeze in place, turn, and start in another direction. It kept moving this way, in jerks and starts. Chal would have thought it was having a seizure, but its eyes were focused and alert, fixed on Dr. Fielding’s figure.
“Why are you injecting this mouse with it?” Chal asked.
“This particular interferon compound is notoriously unstable,” Dr. Fielding said. “We run daily and weekly tests to see if the compound is still viable.”
“Viable,” Chal repeated. “You mean fatal.”
“Eventually, yes. It’ll eat away at enough of the neuronal tissue so that there’s nothing left. But it’s a relatively painless death.”