HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Her laughter overtook her. Her bare shoulders shook. Her curls swirled. Her breasts in her dress were jellies of mirth. She could not contain it. A POETICAL loom! An abacus of words. A rote poet. The poem I rote …
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Shelley and Byron were staring at her in the utmost horror. A hand risen from the grave through the floor of the villa could not have turned their countenances into the waxy disbelief and rage I saw as Claire Clairmont remade the noblest calling, yes, the art of poetry, into something like the product of a knitting machine.
Byron said nothing. He stood up and limped to the wine on the rough table, and, taking the stone jug – and I was sure he would hurl it at her – tipped the contents down his throat. As if in a trance, he rang the bell for more.
I glanced at Shelley, my Ariel, this free spirit, imagining himself imprisoned in a loom of words.
Man is the apex of creation, said Byron. Poetry is the apex of Man.
Ape ape ape ape ape ape … Claire had gone mad. She darted about the room chanting APE.
His Lordship settled the matter, rounding on her like an angry god. He took her shoulders in both hands. She is not tall. Get to bed, madam!
She faced him, an inch away from that handsome, dissatisfied face. She opened her mouth, thought to defy him, closed her mouth. She saw his wrath. Subdued, and not a little fearful, she grabbed her sewing from the chair and ran from the room.
We let her go. The servant came in with more wine. We each drank deep from our goblet. Shelley’s body was fluttering beside me. I held his hand.
Byron turned to me. He smoothed his luxuriant hair.
Let us begin again, he said. To answer your question, Mary, yes, it is my opinion that every advance of thought or invention must be paid for. It is the same with revolution. Revolution, bloody and cruel, the loss of so much to achieve what may seem so little at first, yet we acknowledge that little, that very little, as the light-bringer of a new world.
Then why do you support the Luddites, I said, if you champion the inventions they destroy?
No man should be a slave to a machine, said Byron. It is degrading.
Men are slaves to other men, I said. And everywhere women are slaves.
There will always be hierarchies of men, he replied, but to see all that you have worked for taken away by a lump of metal and wood, that would drive a man half mad.
Not if he owned the machine, said Shelley, then such a man might have leisure while the machine did his work for him.
What utopia is this that you hope to live to see? asked Byron, smiling at him.
The Future, replied Shelley. Surely it will come.
There was a long silence. Polidori had fallen asleep. Shadows lengthened. Cries far off on the lake. When we dead awaken …
Mary, does your story progress? said Byron.
It does, I said. My monster is made.
Easy enough to dismember a corpse, said Polidori, either suddenly waking, or previously feigning sleep to avoid conflict. Mark my words as a medical man! Yes, mark my words! Easy enough with the saw, oh, yes, hard enough with the needle. To saw is not to sew, oh, that’s very good, eh, Byron? To saw is not to …
Byron yawned.
In medical school, said Polidori, in Edinburgh, when we stitched up our dissections, we made do with black gutting line from the fisheries.
Black? said Byron. Was that necessary or merely macabre?
Polidori took his chance to ignore him. Mary! What have you done about his bowels? I mean to say, does he shit, your monster? And what quantity of SHIT?
Byron was amused by this. Shelley was not. The two men had quite different experiences at public school. I perceived that the conversation would fast become an argument about cloaca.
I said, Gentlemen! I am telling a story. A chilling tale. I am not composing a textbook of anatomy.
Well said, Mary! Byron banged the table. Ignore this flea-bite, Polidori.
Excuse me? said Polidori.
Byron looked through him as though he were a spectre, and smiled at me with all his charm and concentration. Such intense and troubled eyes. Even Shelley twitched as Byron took my hand and, kissing it, said, Mary! Read to us a little, won’t you? To pass the hour? Then I shall go to bed and spank your sister.
Stepsister, I said.
Yes, read to us, my darling, said Shelley.
I went to get my pages from my table. How strange is life; this span that is our daily reality, yet daily countermanded by the stories we tell.
I have written what I have written in no fixed chapters yet. Only my impressions. Random, perhaps, but true to the unfolding tragedy of my story – for in tragedy knowledge comes too late.
I have some idea of a chase across the ice. Victor Frankenstein in pursuit of his creation. Fatigued and nearly dead, he is rescued by an adventuring ship, whose captain – I have named him Captain Walton – will tell that part of the story.
Such is my plan.
Yet, suppose my story has a life of its own?
Our lives are ordered by the straight line of time, yet arrows fly in all directions. We move towards death, while things we have scarcely understood return and return, wounding us for our own good.
My story is circular. It has a beginning. It has a middle. It has an end. Yet it does not run as a Roman road from a journey’s start unto its destination. I am, at present, uncertain of the destination. I am sure that the meaning, if there is one, lies in the centre.
I am fearless and therefore powerful.
What? said Byron.
A line from my story … Shall I begin?
It was nearly noon when I arrived at the top of the ascent. I looked on the valley beneath; vast mists were rising from the rivers which ran through it and curling in thick wreaths around the opposite mountains, whose summits were hid in uniform clouds, while rain poured from the dark sky. Presently a breeze dissipated the cloud and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea.
At the distance of a league rose Mont Blanc, in awful majesty. I remained in the recess of a rock gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene. The sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was before, sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed – ‘Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.’
As I said this, I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice; his stature seemed to exceed that of a man. I perceived, as the shape came nearer, that it was the wretch whom I had created …
ARTIFICIAL: made or produced by human beings.
INTELLIGENCE: intellect, mind, brain, brains, brainpower, powers of reasoning, judgement, reason, reasoning, understanding, comprehension, acumen, wit, sense, insight, perceptiveness, perception, perspicaciousness, perspicacity, penetration, discernment, sharpness, quickness of mind, quick-wittedness, smartness, canniness, astuteness, intuition, acuity, alertness, cleverness, brilliance, aptness, ability, giftedness, talent.
Capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, and problem solving.
Mental activity directed toward purposive adaptation to, selection, and shaping of real-world environments relevant to one’s life.
Practical intelligence: ability to adapt to a changing environment.
Intelligence is chasing me but I’m beating it so far.
I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.
Ry?
Yes?
It’s Polly. Polly D.
How did you get my number?
It was at the bottom of your email
.
Oh. OK.
I need to talk to you about Victor Stein.
I already told you—
He’s not what he seems. At least, there’s more to it. At the moment there’s less to it.
What are you talking about?
I can’t trace him any further than a company registered in Geneva. I can’t find his parents or his past.
He used to work in America …
Yes, he did. His records from Virginia Tech don’t match his records at DARPA.
If you work for the military things can be manipulated, I said.
That’s true. (Her voice hesitated.) But why?
I don’t know and I don’t care. Why are you so interested?
Why aren’t you interested?
He’s a friend.
Don’t protect him because you’re in love with him.
Don’t hunt him down because you’re looking for a story.
I ended the call.
Mary?
Yes?
You were talking in your sleep. How restless you are!
My story haunts me. It is the master of my mind.
Rest now! It is but a story.
You say that? You of all people?
Yes.
You who believes that we are shaped by our thoughts. That our thoughts are our reality?
I do believe it to be so.
This story has become my reality. I cannot sleep or eat because of it.
Drink this brandy.
I thought I saw him.
Who?
Victor Frankenstein. In the market this morning.
He is from Geneva, is he not?
He is. So it is unsurprising that he should be here.
Mary, he is not alive.
Is he not?
Sleep now. (He took my hand.) Let this vision go.
Reality is now.
It would be a pity to waste them, said Victor.
I had brought him a consignment of body parts. Working in A&E has its advantages.
We were in Manchester, in Victor’s office, the rain doing what it always does in Manchester; falling.
Flatpack humans. It’s a possibility, said Victor, unpacking legs and arms, half legs, half arms, from the cold storage. Really, Ry, when you consider the human as a collection of limbs and organs, then what is human? As long as your head is on, pretty much everything else can go, can’t it? And yet you dislike the idea of intelligence not bound to a body. That is irrational of you.
We are our bodies, I said.
Every religion disagrees with you. Certainly, since the Enlightenment, science has disagreed with religion – but now we are returning, or arriving, at a deeper insight into what it means to be human – by which I mean it is a stage on the way to being transhuman. Show a little humility and you will be able to think more clearly.
Thanks for the lecture, I said.
I am just trying to help, said Victor … This is a well-shaped leg; whose was it?
Motorbike accident, I said. Young woman.
The prosthetics I am developing with Railes will be fully articulated, and responsive to existing movement, said Victor. The new leg can be programmed, via a smart implant, to walk like the existing leg. We all have a gait.
He unzipped a bag of hands and put one against his face, peering at me through the stiff, mottled fingers. His eyes, unshaped by his face, are wild and bright like a nocturnal animal.
Will you stop that? I said.
He held the hand in his own, as if to shake it, as if the body were there, but invisible. He said, Hands fascinate me – think of paws and claws, and think of the evolutionary advantages of hands. And then consider hands like our own but with super-strength.
All the better to crush you with, I said.
You’re cheerful today, he said.
Maybe being a bodysnatcher is bad for my joie de vivre.
It’s all in a good cause, said Victor.
He bent back and forth the fingers of the dead hand while he talked … Hands are a huge challenge. It’s the test of a good artist – can she draw hands?
Human hands are incredibly dextrous. So far even Hanson Robotics haven’t got it perfect for their bots. Sophia’s hands are good – but you know she’s a robot.
You bet you know she’s a robot! I said. Do you imagine a time when we won’t be able to tell?
Well, that’s the Turing Test, isn’t it? said Victor. Turing was thinking about AI, not bots, but his view was that if an AI can fool us into thinking it’s human during a conversation – an enhancement of the kind of conversation you have now with Siri, or Ramona, or Alexa, or any other chatbot – then we will have reached parallel life forms.
Would you like that Victor? Parallel life forms?
With bots? Personally I would prefer to develop bots as a completely separate life form that remains sub-par to implant-modified humans. Our helpers and caretakers – not our equals.
But if you are talking embodied artificial intelligence – I am not sure we will be able to tell who or what is human and who or what is not. The more interesting point is, will AI be able to tell? It cuts both ways, I think.
AI is for our benefit, surely?
He smiled. How colonial of you.
Am I always a sub-par human joke to you, Victor?
He came over to me, lifted his hand – his beautiful hand – behind my neck. He looked sorry.
I am teasing you. Forgive me. What I mean to say is that in all of the debate, the newspaper articles, the TV channel shlock-u-dramas, the scaremongering, the rapturous geek rallies, the sober Chinese scientists, we see it all from our own human point of view – like a set of selfish parents planning the future for their children. And with no sense of how those children might develop independently.
Our children? Is that what you call them?
Our mind children, yes.
He sat back, lean and elegant, aloof as always. He said, Think for a moment what it will be like for a new life form living with us … not simply a tool that we use – but living with us.
Sexbots! I said. Ron Lord Utopia!
Forget the fucking sexbots, said Victor. They are toys. X-Box Sex-Box. Trivial.
Not when men start marrying them … (I want to annoy him.) Ron Lord, the New Hero of Personal Freedom. Equal Rights for Mixed Marriages.
(I think Victor is going to kill me.)
Ry, do you want to hear me out or not?
Just sayin’.
Victor smoothes his ruffled sense of self. I love him but he is an egomaniac. Good thing he can’t read my mind. OK, Victor. Continue. Please. Thank you.
Victor continues:
At present, computers are spectacular at number crunching and data processing. We can code programmes that feel as though computers are interacting with us, and that’s fun, but in fact they aren’t interacting in the way we expect a human being to interact. But what will happen when a programme that has self-developed, that has its own version of what we call consciousness – realises, in the human sense of the verb ‘to realise’, exactly what/who is on the other side of the screen?
Us?
Us.
He flipped on his screen.
His screen saver is a gorilla buying a banana from a street vendor in New York City.
He said, Humans will be like decayed gentry. We’ll have the glorious mansion called the past that is falling into disrepair. We’ll have a piece of land that we didn’t look after very well called the planet. And we’ll have some nice clothes and a lot of stories. We’ll be fading aristocracy. We’ll be Blanche Dubois in a moth-eaten silk dress. We’ll be Marie Antoinette with no cake.
I watched him talk. I love to watch him talk. He likes to be watched. He’s a showman.
He went over to his bags of human parts and fastened the severed hand back in its ziplock bag. He said, There’s a horror story about a hand that becomes detached from its owner and lives its own, rather sordid, existence. Strangles people, frightens children, forges c
heques, that sort of thing. These days I suppose it would troll people on Twitter.
I said, Ron Lord told me he is working on a wank hand.
Victor laughed. Yes, I can see that would be good for his business. Attached or detached?
I didn’t ask.
Victor pulled me to him – a living thing among the cadaver offcuts.
It won’t be as good as you, he said.
Am I good?
Very good.
He was moving my hand towards his crotch.
Is this what I am to you? I said.
A hand? No.
A sex object.
Don’t you like what we do? (He took his penis out of his trousers.)
You know I do. (I spat in my palm.)
Then why deny pleasure?
To avoid pain. (He takes four minutes this way.)
He said, I can’t reason with you while you do this.
Slow movements are what he likes. My head resting on his shoulder is what he likes. His hand on my hip is what he likes. The scent of him is what I like. Forked animal biped. A man who wants to be without his body. And I am holding his body in my left hand.
He says, Can I come inside you?
Yes.
He sits on the stainless-steel bench. His hands are braced behind him. I sit across him. Now his head is on my chest. I know how to move. He comes.
I love you, he says.
I want to hold this moment. I want to believe it. I want his love to have enough salt in it to float me. I don’t want to be swimming for my life. I want to trust him. I don’t trust him.
You love the idea of me, I say.
Because you’re a hybrid?
Yes. (We’ve had this conversation before.)
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