I am covered in dust, said Claire.
Vibration, I am afraid, said Victor.
Has anybody ever explored the whole thing down here? said Ron.
No, said Victor. No one can. There are dead-ends and blockages, turnings that lead nowhere. Bunkers, passageways, routes under the whole of Manchester.
Victor opened a door. An intense blast of cold hit us. We went inside.
We were in a room that appeared and vanished in its own icy fog. Now we glimpsed each other, like strangers, like watchers. Then we disappeared from sight like the dead. A bank of equipment lined one wall.
Put down the box, please, said Victor.
Ron put it down.
Very well, said Victor. As the Buddhists say: past is past. Life is now.
Victor began to unscrew the casing of the box. He talked as he worked. It might have been an ordinary demonstration in an ordinary lab anywhere in the world. Ordinary screwdriver. Ordinary explanation.
Victor said, A baby’s brain is made up of about 100 million neurons. Each neuron is connected to around 10,000 other neurons. The job they do is simple – and astonishing. Information of any and every kind flows through the neuron as a series of electrical impulses that are received by branch-like extensions of the cell. These little branches are called dendrites. But the brain does not keep itself to itself. You know that saying – neurons that fire together wire together? The brain is a pattern-making machine. What I hope to do today is to retrieve some of those patterns.
Then he opened the padded hood that protected the head.
What we saw we could scarcely believe. It was as though we had stumbled across a cairn in the Antarctic. Found Scott in his tent. Found the suspended body of another world.
The face was shrunken. The hair, wispy. The moustache bristled – each individual strand standing out. The lips were sunken and invisible. The head itself sat like a waxwork. The eyes were closed.
Nitrogen vapours swirled around the head. He – it – was like a thing summoned at a seance, ghastly and unknowable. And would it speak?
Hello, Jack, said Victor, softly. He put out his gloved hand and gently touched the head. I have missed you.
He turned to us. It is my pleasure to introduce you to my friend and mentor: I. J. Good.
Hampstead, London, 1928
Isadore! Stop staring at your pupik and bring me the vatch case.
Yes, Papa.
His father was sitting at his workshop bench in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, his eye-glass in one eye as he bent over a paper scattered with tiny cogs and tinier diamonds. The gold casing of the watch lay open and empty.
It will be Shabbat in two hours, Isadore.
Yes, Papa.
Go to the pond, you vant to go to the pond? Go on!
Did you mend it, Papa?
His father made a gesture to a wooden drawer under the wooden bench.
Isadore took out the clockwork Hansa-Brandenburg. He was too young to remember the war. He had been born in 1919, the year after it ended. An officer called Graves had given the German tin toy to his father in payment for a watch repair. The seaplane was about a foot long and could sail right across Whitestone Pond. When he had it with him the other boys played with him.
He took the seaplane and ran up Holly Mount towards the pond. The dray horses from the brewery were cooling their heavy legs in the shallows. Some of the other boys were there with a leather football.
Hey! Judah!
They called him Judah.
He stuffed his wire glasses into his jacket pocket. His socks were loose from the running. He was small for his age but cleverer than all of them.
Numbers, Isadore, numbers! His father making patterns of diamonds as YHWH had made the stars.
He didn’t believe in God.
He wound up the Hansa-Brandenburg, and, crouching down, let it sail on the pond.
One of the boys grabbed the seaplane as it reached the other side. He was holding it over his head, laughing at Isadore. Dirty Jew! Then he threw the tin toy as far as he could into the pond. Its clockwork wound down, it bobbed aimlessly. Isadore had no choice but to wade in to get it. He took off his socks and shoes, holding them in one hand as he shivered into the water. The water went past his knees and began to soak his heavy shorts. The crowd of boys were laughing.
Don’t look back, Isadore, don’t look back. Say it yourself. Say it to yourself. His mother said it: Don’t look back.
He wouldn’t turn into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife in the Bible. She looked back. The other one looked back too – the Greek one, Orpheus.
He didn’t look back; he grabbed the tin seaplane and waded awkwardly over to the other side of the pond where the draymen, smoking their pipes, stood with the horses. None spoke to him.
He went home slowly. He liked the tall houses that wound down the hill. Cobblestones under his feet. Big trees over his head.
The sun was setting. Low light and coal smoke. His mother had lit the Shabbat candle. His father had put on his yarmulke and was standing up waiting for Isadore, who stood in his wet shorts, put on his wire glasses, and together they recited the Kaddish.
He was better at mathematics than any of the other boys at school. He got a place at Cambridge. Easy. Not now Isadore Jacob Gudak, the Polish Jew. Now he was I. J. Good and his friends called him Jack.
In 1938, the year he graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge, Hitler annexed Austria, and Sigmund Freud came to live in Hampstead. It was a bad time to be a Jew.
But in 1941, Jack was invited to work at Bletchley Park. Hut 8. Alan Turing was his supervisor. Good was brought in to work on naval encryption. Turing’s team had already broken the Enigma code for German air and land operations, but the Kreigsmarine was better at protecting its wireless traffic. Signals were taking days to decipher, making them operationally useless.
Wake up, you little sod!
Turing was shaking his shoulder. Turing’s wool tie kept hitting Good’s nose.
Are you ill?
No, I’m not ill! I am tired!
This is the night shift.
There is notink to shift. I might as well sleep!
The rest of the chaps are awake but you are asleep?
I am not asleep! You haf woke me up!
Sometimes, just sometimes, he sounded like his father, but mostly his accent held.
It was a bad start but Jack worked best when he dreamed. He was dreaming of the Hausa-Brandenburg on Whitestone Pond.
Kenngruppenbuch.
The German telephonists had to add dummy letters to the trigrams. Were the letters random or was there a bias towards certain letters? He inspected some of the messages that had been broken – yes, there was a bias … the Germans were using a table.
He pointed this out to Turing … who began talking to him again.
And later, one night, the work done and the lights down, staring at a message that couldn’t be decoded – the Enigma machine calibrated to its Offizier setting – staring, staring.
His eyes are heavy now, and the sun has set, and his father’s voice, and the smell of dumplings and cabbage, and he’s asleep, reversing through time, spinning like a top and time the whip, his socks loose, running down the hill – or is it up the hill? – to the pond that looks like the moon and he looks up at the moon and the moon is full and all the stars are like diamonds and his father is mending a watch, and his mother says Don’t look back, and the boys are jeering, and he sees that the order has been reversed.
The order has been reversed.
In the morning he reverses the order of both the variation cipher and the special cipher on the Enigma machine. He breaks the code.
He looks like a time traveller, said Claire.
Time traveller, said Victor. That phrase was first used in 1959.
You know so much, said Claire. Tell me, are you married?
Too busy, said Victor.
Is that what it is? I said.
I was back in the room wit
h a tray of coffee and sandwiches from Caffè Nero. Even mad scientists need to eat.
Did you bring an extra coffee? said Victor.
No. Why?
It seems we have an uninvited guest.
Victor flipped the monitor screen. Creeping down the stairs with a flashlight, like an extra in a Hitchcock movie, was Polly D.
Bloody hell! I said. How did she get in?
She followed you, said Victor. Shall we go to greet her?
Victor dropped a bank of Bakelite switches like the electricity stack in a Frankenstein movie. The whole place was floodlit and a War of the Worlds siren smashed into the hermetic calm of our concrete bunker.
Jesus, Prof! said Ron. I’ve got my hearing aid in!
Victor threw open the door in full theatrical style. He should be wearing a white coat.
Miss D! What a surprise. Not exactly pleasant but a surprise.
The door was open, said Polly.
So you let yourself in.
What are you doing down here?
No, no, said Victor. What are YOU doing down here?
I have a few questions, began Polly, but Victor held up his hand.
I fear I shall disappoint you, Miss D. There is no artificial superintelligence lurking in the vaults. No army of robots poised to take over Britain. I am not Dr Strangelove. The breakthrough – when it comes – will be in America or China. Try blagging your way into Facebook’s Building 8, or hacking Elon Musk’s Neuralink – but don’t waste your time in Manchester, where it all began. The British don’t have the resources for the next stage.
You have a head …
Brain emulation? Is that what you are interested in? Then go and see Nick Bostrom at the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford. He’s an interesting guy.
You’re going to try to revive a frozen brain, aren’t you?
Victor shrugged.
I’d love to write that story!
Of course you would. We all would. The lunatic scientist in the white coat. The secret tunnels. The vitrified head returning to life.
Excuse me, said Claire. Don’t I know you from somewhere?
The women looked at each other.
Oh, God! said Polly. Intelligent Vibrators!
You were one of the birds at the show? said Ron. The sexpo?
Don’t call me a bird, said Polly.
Sorry kitten, said Ron, were you modelling? You look like a model.
I’m not a model, said Polly. (I could tell she didn’t mind being mistaken for a model.)
Well, whatever, said Ron, you were there and I can tell you that things have moved on since then – the prof and me is in business together – Claire is my new CEO – oh, and we’ve decided to buy Wales.
What? All of it? I said.
Yeah! The plan is to showcase Wales as the world’s first fully integrated country. Human and bot.
Wales voted Brexit Leave, I said. Wales for the Welsh, remember? Why do you think the Land of the Leek will want a multi-culti bot-verse?
That’s the beauty of it! said Ron. The bots will be Welsh, not foreign. We’ll make them all in Cardiff and they’ll all have Welsh accents.
Beautiful, said Claire.
Solves racism! said Ron. Solves Brexit! We’ll have bot workers to pick the broccoli and sweep the roads and work in the hospitals, but they’ll all be Welsh. It’s a model for a new world.
It’s certainly inventive, said Victor. You could sell it to Hungary and Brazil. Or Trump. No Mexican bots.
Bloody brilliant! said Polly. Would you like to be interviewed for Vanity Fair?
Is that a make-up magazine? said Ron.
We’d love to! said Claire.
This will go viral, said Polly. She got out her iPhone.
Does anyone know you are here? asked Victor.
God, no! This is my scoop. All of it. Bots for Brexit. Talking Heads. Let’s have a photograph – right here under the crazy swinging light.
Polly stood back, lifting her phone. In a second Victor was behind her, and her iPhone was in his hand.
WHAT? Give that back!
This is private property, said Victor. No phones allowed.
That’s a human-rights infringement! said Claire.
An iPhone is not a human right, said Victor mildly. Privacy is.
Oh yeah? said Polly. That’s how men like you get away with it, isn’t it? Privacy. Behind closed doors. NDAs.
You are trespassing, said Victor. When you leave I shall return your phone. By the way, it might interest you to know that in 1986, the year you were born—
How do you know when I was born?
You are not the only one who runs a few background checks, said Victor.
What’s going on here? said Claire.
In 1986, continued Victor, the world’s most impressive and fastest computer was the Cray Supercomputer, big as a room. This smartphone is more powerful. That’s progress for you!
He held the phone above his head. Polly took a jump at it and fell back. This is totally out of order! she said.
I agree! said Claire.
Ladies! said Ron, holding up his fat little hands. Let’s not quarrel when we’ve just met. I agree with the prof. His place, his rules. Polly! You weren’t invited. Now you’re here. So behave.
Thank you, Ron, said Victor. Polly, since you’re so interested – come and take a look at Jack.
We stood in a line in the anteroom, squinting through the grainy glass like those scratched reels of people watching an execution on Death Row. Except that we were watching a revival – weren’t we? Were we?
If we were to succeed at brain emulation, said Victor, the uploaded brain could run at different operating speeds – much faster than ours, or much slower, depending on the task to be completed.
Is this gonna work? said Claire.
If it does work it will temporarily shut down the UK’s entire Cloud storage system, said Victor. And probably cause a power outage too. The brain is huge. About 2.5 petabyte capacity. One petabyte is equal to a million gigabytes. One gigabyte is about 650 web pages or five hours watching YouTube. Your phone probably has 128 GB of memory. By comparison, one and a half petabytes would store you 10 billion photos on Facebook.
All packed in there? said Ron.
All in there.
Even me?
Even you.
God! said Polly. That iHead is the most gruesome sight I have ever seen.
iHead?
Well, what would you call it?
I call him Jack, said Victor.
I can’t look, said Polly.
I thought you were a Defender of Truth, not a Fading Flower? said Victor. There are far worse sights in the world than a severed head.
I’ve got a whole factory of heads, said Ron. In our January sale we’re offering an extra head half-price with every full-price bot. As we say on the website – two heads is better than one.
I’m surprised your creepy clients want any heads at all, said Polly. Maybe they don’t, given how often they yank them off? Professor Stein! How long before some dick-waving, woman-hating sociopathic genetics lab engineers women without heads? Women don’t need heads to cook and clean. Plus no diet issues and no talking.
I am a feminist, said Victor. I prefer women with heads.
Fuck me! said Polly. Is that as far as it goes? For a man who says he’s a feminist? Women get to keep their own heads?
You’re just mad at me, said Victor.
I prefer a woman with her head on, said Ron, really I do. I agree women talk all the time, but no head, no mouth … And men love getting their—
RON!!!
Sorry, Claire … Sorry.
Returning swiftly to the interesting history of severed heads, said Victor, there’s a legend that the decapitated heads of miscreants lined up on spikes across London Bridge had oracular powers. Riding past them at horseback height, the rider’s head was close enough to the ragged neck and the dropped jaw. The eyes were left wild and open. It was thought that if
a questioner cut his thumb and let a few drops of blood into the mouth, the head would speak.
Speak what? I said.
Truth, I suppose, said Victor. Voice-activated heads can be useful. In Norse legend Odin carries with him the independent head of Mímir. This head offers tactical advice and it can foresee the future.
In the eighth circle of the Inferno the poet Dante converses with the severed head of Betran de Born.
In the legend of Gawain the axed head of the Green Knight holds a green and ghastly conversation.
My personal favourites, though, are a special variety of saint known as cephalophores. They carry their own heads – rather like hand luggage.
Victor, I hate to interrupt your flow, but a brain can’t survive without a blood supply or oxygen. Switch off its power flow for ten minutes and the damage is irreversible. That’s why the brain dies when the heart stops.
Ah, Dr Shelley! Always so literal. Heart transplants weren’t possible fifty years ago. In fifty years from now, brain emulation will be the new normal.
And what does it solve?
What do you mean, what does it solve?
For the human race. All our faults, vanities, idiocies, prejudices, cruelty. Do you really want augmented humans, superhumans, uploaded humans, forever humans, with all the shit that comes with us? Morally and spiritually, we are barely crawling out of the sea onto dry land. We’re not ready for the future you want.
Have we ever been ready? said Victor. Progress is a series of accidents, of mistakes made in a hurry, of unforeseen consequences. So what? None of us know what will happen to us when we leave home in the morning. Simply, we go.
Heads up then, said Ron. Haha.
Will you shut up? I said.
No, I won’t shut up, Bloody Mary, said Ron. What I want to know is this: if that iHead, or Jack-thing, comes back to life, then what happens?
I get the Pulitzer Prize, said Polly.
Victor said, If I succeed in reviving any part of Jack’s brain, the next step will be to find living persons who wish to pioneer the experiment.
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