That’s because being wiped out is alarming, I said.
Don’t be so tabloid, said Victor. Think of it as accelerated evolution.
He pulled me to him. Kissed me. Like I’m a small boy or a small girl who can’t manage abstract thinking and needs to stroke the cat.
Now can I continue with this story?
Yes. Go on.
After Bletchley Park, Good worked in Intelligence at GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters that is the successor to Bletchley Park. He was a consultant to IBM, and the Atlas Computer Laboratory, as well as holding a fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford. In the late sixties – 1967, as you will have worked out from his little story – he moved permanently to the USA to work on machine intelligence.
Why did he leave England?
Oh, for any number of reasons, said Victor, but one of them, and an important one, was that after what happened to Alan Turing, Good never trusted the British establishment again.
Did he know Turing was homosexual?
No, he didn’t; hardly anyone did. Turing was shy and introverted, and homosexuality was a crime. Jack was shaken and disgusted at the way Turing was treated. He wrote, I’m not saying that Alan Turing won the war, but without him we would definitely have lost it.
What had the war been for, if not to defeat the intolerance of fascism? Six million Jews, like Good, had been murdered by fascists. Homosexuals were murdered too – and for what?
Jack hated hypocrisy. The British invented it. He thought America, at least after McCarthyism, would be fresher and freer, and, as this was the late 60s, he was right.
He wanted new challenges also, and he could see that the next leap in computing would come from America, not Britain. He was right about that too.
As early as 1965, Good wrote about an intelligence explosion – that is, an artificial-intelligence explosion, and it was he who came up with the phrase, so prescient now, ‘the last invention’.
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion’, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.
It was that last sentence that drew Stanley Kubrick to Jack. Kubrick brought Jack on board as his advisor when he was making 2001: A Space Odyssey. That was in 1968. The principal character being the paranoid HAL 9000 supercomputer.
Good must be dead by now, I said.
He died in 2009. He was ninety-two.
Did he have children?
Jack never married.
There was a terrible noise. Like a Tube train hurtling towards the room. The room vibrated.
What the hell?
Don’t worry, said Victor, this subterranean warren is kept dry using massive pumps. If the pumps were to fail, the chambers and tunnels would soon be flooded with water from the River Irwell and the sunken network of underground canals from the days of hauling coal in a twilight world of the city beneath a city. But we are quite safe.
I didn’t feel safe, but I don’t feel safe around Victor. Excited, enthralled, but not safe.
This story, I said; where is it leading?
Back to Arizona, said Victor. Back to Alcor.
Alcor?
That is why I was there – when we met. I told you I was visiting a friend …
You’d better explain, I said.
Above us the boom boom of invisible forces.
Victor said, What I am about to say is undocumented and unknown. I imagine I can trust you?
You’re sleeping with me, I said.
And you are sleeping with me, he said, but you do not trust me.
I was silent.
He seemed a little embarrassed by his sharpness.
Let’s agree to trust each other on this, I said.
All right, said Victor. Well, then, before he died, Jack and I agreed that we would preserve his head.
His head?
His head. Yes. With a view to returning him to consciousness some day.
His head is at Alcor?
Correct. Jack had done so much work on machine intelligence. He jested about cryopreservation, though he remained unconvinced by it. But what was there to lose? And so we made our pact. He was curious about the coming world.
That world hasn’t come yet, I said. The technology doesn’t exist.
That is true, said Victor. But we must try.
Try what?
I am going to try to scan his brain.
Victor was standing under a flickering overhead neon light. His expression was fixed. His eyes fragmented blue as the light shadowed and illuminated him.
He said, Medical ethics don’t allow any experiments on the human brain; the scanning technology is so invasive it results in death – but what if the person will die in any case? The terminally ill making a sacrifice for humanity. Why can’t I work on that brain? The killer on Death Row could be offered the chance of a final act of reparation. I could scan his brain. What loss to the world is a serial killer?
Victor! Stop it!
He said, There is always loss, always failure. Don’t you think these experiments are going on in secret, in other parts of the world? Where human life is cheap? And if a hostile power were to achieve this … Jesus – they have already modified an embryo in China. Without any oversight or protocol at all. Don’t you think they are working on other things too?
This is madness, I said.
What is sanity? he said. Can you tell me? Poverty, disease, global warming, terrorism, despotism, nuclear weapons, gross inequality, misogyny, hatred of the stranger.
He’s pacing, pacing, like a thing caged in its own body. A thing trapped in its own time.
He tried to calm himself. Steady himself. He said, Alcor can’t release the head without a doctor in charge. I need you to go and get Jack and bring him back here. To Manchester. To my laboratory.
I can’t do that, Victor.
Of course you can. It is legal. The paperwork is in place.
He moved towards me. I turned away. I said, Is this why you came after me? Is this what you realised you could use me for? When we met? Is this what it’s been about all along? First grave-robber and now ferryman? To bring you the dead?
Victor looked at me. He didn’t flinch. Ry, I am not using you. Please understand that.
That’s not what it feels like to me.
Then how can I convince you?
Can we go now? I said. Out of here?
He is recovered. He is himself. He smiles at me. The flush goes out of his face. His eyes no longer light the room. He gets our coats. He holds mine for me while I put it on. Ordinary actions. Ordinary life.
Out now, out of the concrete and steel. Out of the harsh neon and deep shadows. Away from the machines. Away from the thud of suction pumps and the weight of water. Corridors, lino, stairs, leading up and up, and I am counting, sensing the air change, like a visitor leaving the underworld.
And then we’re out in the rainy damp of the home-time rush, and he’s locking the gates just as though we’ve been on one of those tours people love: Subterranean Secret of the City.
And no one cares or notices us. We could be invisible. Maybe we are invisible. He walks on as if nothing has happened, his hands in his trench-coat pockets, holding the undone coat around his body against the weather.
We walk in silence until we reach the corner where I will turn to walk to the station. Then I hesitate, and he can read my hesitation. I should have said goodbye and walked on.
He said, I know you were taking the train tonight, but stay, will you? Leave in the morning? I have to be up early myself.
I don’t answer, but I fall into step with
him, slower, trying to think, but at the same time seeking his reassurance, wanting to feel lighter and freer than I do. Wanting to turn away and take the train. Knowing that I won’t.
A tram hoots as it rumbles past on metal rails.
Victor steps back; for a split second I imagined him stepping forward. My heart is beating too fast.
He is contrite. Not like himself. Looking straight ahead, he says, I said too much.
I don’t answer. My mind is rioting but I don’t answer him. I know how it is. Saying too much. Saying too little. Who says enough? Just enough?
My closest conversations are bad translations.
That’s not what I meant – not what I meant at all.
I am so uncertain of what I can manage that the certainty of another person is like an oracle. Victor is certain. He takes the weight off me. But what is the weight in himself?
He puts his arm around me. He says, I am sorry. Can we lie down together? Won’t you come home with me? Forget the rest. Forget it all.
Already we are crossing the street together, moving through this passing time and our own story.
Victor lives in an old warehouse on the top floor. Steel columns, exposed brick, long windows that open onto the roof of the city. His apartment is neat; forensically arranged. The colours are grey and brown with a vast red rug like a bloodstain. In the bedroom the big metal bed looks out onto a silent tower. The bell is still there, he says, but it never tolls.
He closes the blinds. The room smells of lavender and brandy. He sits on the bed to remove his boots. I sit on the other side with my back to him, picking up his bedside book – a biography of Robert Oppenheimer.
Am I in your light? he asks, turning on his knees and leaning over to me. He puts his arms around me. This is so simple, so clear, and nothing else is. I turn to kiss him, and I wish the moment could hold, that time could be anywhere but here.
Victor turns the pages of the book. Oppenheimer was many things … a brilliant physicist, a mystic, a man who never forgave himself for the atomic bomb. It is not always possible to forgive oneself. And sometimes you make a choice to do something, knowing that you must do it, and that forgiveness is impossible.
He undoes my shoes like a mother, and peels off my socks, my jeans, and then he leaves me in my shirt in the half-light while he goes into the kitchen to make some food, fetch some wine. I like the firm, clean feel of his bed.
His bed. He sends his sheets to the laundry. He prefers the crispness of starched cotton. He comes back in with a tray, and tumblers, a Chianti, and bruschetta with chopped fresh basil, tomatoes and garlic. He makes us a world when we are together like this. He takes trouble. He’s kind. He gives me a napkin to put round my neck and feeds me small pieces of food as if I am a baby bird.
I take his hand in mine. Kiss it. Twist the gold ring on his little finger. I ask him, What’s the imprint on your signet ring?
He shows me. A snake swallowing its own tail. He says, We come full circle. Whether we know it or not.
Then he pulls me to him on the bed.
His bed. Two square metres of safety.
His bed, where I don’t need to explain. Where he doesn’t give me his theories of everything. Where his eyes are calm and deep. In his bed there’s his body and his desire.
He feels intimate. This is intimate. Our life raft. But if this is the raft, what is the shipwreck?
We are.
Differently disabled – his pessimism about love, my fear of it. Our wounded lives take shelter here. Why can’t we mend ourselves? Why can’t we save each other?
He kisses me, rests my face in his neck, runs his hand down my spine, his leg crossing mine. I love the warmth of his skin and the dark hair that tingles my fingers.
We make love without speaking. His hair falls into my face. Full of him, I forget my fear. The shadows recede.
Night deepens and he falls asleep above the noises of the city. The apartment is dark but for the two candles above the bed. I raise myself up to blow them out. He stirs and rolls over into his own private sleep. Check the clock. In a couple of hours I’ll be finding my clothes in the dark and leaving for the train.
Yet this night feels like forever – not that it will last forever but that it is forever. This is where we belong. Our capsule lost in space. The rest is a dream we’re dreaming. He talks in his sleep.
This night-soaked bed.
I lie back down quietly beside him and drift into his dark. Time will find us out but not yet. Enough to sleep in the temporary forever of now.
You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track – the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Bedlam 3
It was evening when she came, her hair the colour of copper, the sun on it like an Aladdin’s lamp. There was something of the genie about her, quick and transparent of form, yet she held herself confidently and shook my hand.
He is here?
He is in my study.
He believes …
He believes that you created him.
Before I could say more, the door opened and Victor Frankenstein entered the room. The food and rest he has enjoyed in my care have restored him to health. He is handsome. She too. Their glances met. He held out his hand.
You are Mary Shelley.
I am she.
She was composed. Unafraid.
He turned to me eagerly and said, You have shown her my papers? All my papers?
She is acquainted with your credentials.
Yes. That is why I am here, she said.
I poured wine. I did not know what else to do. We sat down.
Unmake me, he said.
The lady gazed at him for some while. He appeared very far from mad, but very often the mad have a deep conviction the sane lack.
You have appeared in the pages of a novel, she said. You and the monster you created.
I am the monster you created, said Victor Frankenstein. I am the thing that cannot die – and I cannot die because I have never lived.
My dear sir! (At this I had to intervene.) If I were to shoot you now, with this pistol (I took the pistol from my pocket), your life would be at an end. Yes, sir! A dead end.
I pray you do it, Mr Wakefield, he said. If I leave this body, still I shall return. This form I show to you now is temporary. I exist for all time, unless my creator frees me.
I shook my head sadly. I had entertained hopes for him. Now I fear he will never leave this place. Poor delusionist!
Mary Shelley seemed unafraid of his wild claims. She said, Tell me, then, sir, how you have come out of the pages of a book, and into this life?
Victor Frankenstein said, There has been an error. I should have perished on the ice. Instead I find myself here, in this madhouse, and I know that he whom I loathe is loose in the world and seeks my destruction.
Yet you wish to die! I said.
I wish to disappear! I do not belong in this body. This gross body!
My husband would understand you there, sir, she said.
This body! he continued. I scarcely recognise it. I am Mind. Thought. Spirit. Consciousness.
Dear sir, be calm! I said. Do you not know that each of us fails to recognise our face in the mirror as time robs us of youth and vigour? Do you imagine I was always thus? (I gestured to my girth and gout.) I was a fencing champion, sir. A greyhound! No, no, each of us turns away in dismay from what he must become.
I have never been like you! answered the man. My madness is that I am trapped here. Outside waits one whose fiendish, pitiless cunning will instruct others to experiment as I did – without any care for the human race.
Mary Shelley said, If you are not of the human race, why should you care for it?
For the love of it that you bear, he answered. Love that you have taught me. Shall I quote our book? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy.
She said, Those words are spoken not by Victor Frankenstein, but by his creature
.
We are the same, the same, answered Frankenstein.
The lady paused then, as though remembering some thought of her own. She replied to him, If you are the same, then you too must be the pitiless fiend of infinite cunning.
And of sorrow, he said. And of sorrow.
The deep night surrounded us. The long candles in their holders had burned low. I wondered at us here, and what strangeness we met with. There are passages of time that tell more like text than time, when we sense we are a story we repeat, or a story that is told. What did he say? The teller or the tale? I do not know.
I drew her aside. I said to her, Madam, in my long association with the mad, I have heard many a lost soul who truly believes he is the Emperor of Russia or Alexander the Great or the mother of Christ, or Christ himself. The mind is a curious condition. An invention.
An invention? she said.
I do believe it, I said. By consent, the majority of us live and die as though the world around us is solid, even though each day disappears without trace. Our actions have consequences that rebound through time, yet each day disappears and a new day takes its place. The mad do not share our world. Their own is equally vivid. More so. The mad are actors on a different stage.
Mary Shelley drank wine. I like a woman who drinks wine, not sip sip sip but in a draught, like a mouthful of air. I said, This wine is from Cahors.
She said, I learned to drink wine in Italy, and I find it is excellent for the damp, for melancholy, and for writing.
Yes, indeed, I said. Your famous book. Such a stir!
You have read it?
Indeed!
The response of society was unexpected, she said, perhaps because I am a woman.
Your husband did not write it, then? As Sir Walter Scott assumes?
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