by Beth Revis
A fat, fuzzy bumblebee meanders by, buzzing softly as it dips among the flowers in the rooftop garden.
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may
contribute a verse.
—Conclusion of Walt Whitman’s “O Me! O Life!”
A SINCERE THANKS TO ALL MY READERS
This book, quite simply, would not exist without you. Thank you for reading and supporting my writing. I deeply appreciate you, and hope you enjoyed The Body Electric! Continue reading for more information on my work and additional content, including a short story, an interview, and more.
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There’s more to read! If this is the first book by Beth you’ve read, make sure you check out her first science fiction trilogy. Across the Universe is the story of two teens trapped aboard a generation space ship bound for a new planet, and the sequels, A Million Suns and Shades of Earth, show their struggle to escape the ship and find a new home.
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Continue reading! There’s more to this book—don’t put it down yet! Exclusive bonus content follows…
INSPIRATION FOR THE TURING TEST
AFTER FINISHING the Across the Universe series, I knew I wasn't quite done working on science fiction, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to explore next. I tried several different ideas, but nothing was sticking.
I remember very clearly sitting at a sandwich shop
with my husband when he brought up Alan Turing and the infamous Turing Test, the test used to determine if something is a computer or a human. By the time we finished lunch, I had the following story, "The Turing Test," nearly completely formed. What I didn't realize is that the seed of that idea was still growing in my mind--this novel is evidence of that.
The following is the original story that sparked the idea. "The Turing Test" was originally printed in Lightspeed Magazine under the editor John Joseph Adams.
THE TURING TEST
BETH REVIS
Test Facility Site: Nabco Research Station B
Test Administrator: Dr. Richard K. Philip
Test Subject Identity Code: ES42
Test Administered: Turing
“Do you know why you’re here?” Dr. Philip asks.
I laugh. “I would be rather stupid if I didn’t.”
Dr. Philip’s smile is indulgent, which frustrates me. I uncross my legs at the ankle and re-cross them at my knees, not bothering to readjust my skirt. Dr. Philip blushes and looks down at his clipboard.
“I need you to state your reasoning,” he says. “For the record.”
He might be a professor, but he isn’t much older than me. Not more than a decade. Just about right.
“My name is Elektra Shepherd,” I say. “I’m eighteen years old. A freshman in university, majoring in artificial intelligence. Today I am a participant in a Turing test. For the record,” I add in a lower voice, just so I can see Dr. Philip blush.
“Thank you, Ms. Shepherd,” Dr. Philip says.
I smile at him, relishing the feel of my heavy lipstick on my lips.
“And could you state what you think a Turing test is?” he adds.
I raise my eyebrow at him.
“For the record.”
“A Turing test is a test developed to determine whether or not artificial intelligence has, well, intelligence. Essentially, a person—me, in this case—is separated in one room. Across that wall,” I point to the wall directly opposite me, “is another room. Inside the room is one person and one A.I.. All three of us are going to have a little conversation, and then I’m going to tell you which one the person is.”
“Which one you think is the person,” Dr. Philip says, making a note on the paper in his clipboard.
I roll my eyes. “Come on, Richard.”
“Dr. Philip, please.”
“Come on, Dr. Philip. I know I’m just a freshman, but I think I’ll be able to figure out the difference between a computer and a person.”
Dr. Philip laughs, and something in the harsh sound makes me uncross my legs and readjust my skirt. “Oh, you’d be surprised,” he says. “A.I. has come quite a long way in the last five or so years.”
I have a dozen witty comebacks for his words, but not one for the sneering tone of his voice.
“Shall we get started?” Dr. Philip asks.
“Let’s,” I say.
Dr. Philip does a sound check on the microphone and a visual check on the video recorder that will be monitoring me. The two screens on the wall across from me light up. SUBJECT BLUE, the first screen says in bright blue letters across the top of the black screen. SUBJECT RED, the other screen says.
“I’ll be just on the other side of the door if you need anything,” Dr. Philip says as he opens the door. I nod. He shuts the door, and I hear a lock click into place.
The two screens across from me fade to black.
A minute goes by.
“Hello?” I finally say.
“Hi!” flashes in bright blue letters across the screen on the left.
“Hey,” flashes in duller red letters across the screen on the right.
“Let’s begin,” I say.
“Let’s,” says Blue.
“Okay,” says Red.
I glance at the video recorder in the corner of the room, aware that Dr. Philip’s eyes are on me right now. It makes me uncomfortable, as if I were the one being tested, not Red and Blue.
“Well, I guess the obvious question is . . . are both of you human?”
“Yes,” says Blue.
“Obviously,” says Red. “But then again, if the whole point of this test is to trick you, then I’d of course say that I was human, even if I wasn’t.”
I lean forward, smiling. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to make this easy on me.”
“That’s not a question,” Blue says.
“I would like to make this as difficult as possible for you,” Red says.
“Okay . . .” I think fast. “What’s the square root of four-thousand-thirty nine?”
Math has always been my strong point—if Blue or Red figures out this problem quicker than me, then that one must be A.I..
“63.5531274,” Blue says as I’m still figuring out the last numbers.
Gotcha, I think.
“I’m a math major, ha-ha,” Blue adds after that.
Maybe not.
“The answer is 62,” Red says.
“Ha!” I laugh triumphantly, “The answer isn’t 62!” This is too easy—an A.I. just has a fancy calculator for a brain, it would know the right answer immediately.
“But,” Red types quickly, his words forming on the screen as fast as I can read them, “If I were trying to trick you into thinking I was a human, then obviously I would tell you the wrong answer.”
I narrow my eyes. “Then what is the right answer?”
“I don’t know,” Red says.
But, of course, that’s what he would say if he was trying to trick me.
Math wouldn’t work—basic knowledge wouldn’t work. Even if Blue answered everything correctly from the year Columbus discovered America to the exact number of electrons in carbon, he could just be really smart. And even if Red failed every question I asked—he could just be getting them wrong on purpose to throw me off his scent.
/>
Time to get personal.
“I’d like to get to know you both better,” I say. “What’re your names?”
“That’s irrelevant,” Blue says. “We’re supposed to be anonymous.”
“Andy,” Red says.
“We’re supposed to be anonymous, huh, Blue?” I ask, smirking. “So I guess you’re not going to tell me much more than that you’re a math major?”
“I don’t think I was supposed to say that . . .” Blue says.
“The computer told you he was a math major?” Andy says. “Funny. Bet he guessed the square root question so quick he had to throw you off with that.”
I laugh—then I realize that by laughing, I’m already thinking that Andy is real, not Blue, and I want to keep an open mind. Dr. Philip said the test would be tricky, and it is.
“What about you?” Andy asks.
“Me?”
“What’s your name, major, all that stuff.”
“I’m Elektra, a freshman in A.I..”
“A.I.!” Andy says, and even though the words are written across the screen, I can imagine his tone of voice: impressed with a hint of laughter for the joke of an A.I. major conducting a Turing test.
“Yeah,” I say. “You?”
“Sophomore in engineering.”
“What kind?”
It takes Andy a moment to respond. “What kind of sophomore? Just the regular kind, I guess.”
I really do laugh aloud now. “No, I meant—what kind of engineering?”
“Oh! Ha-ha. Android engineering.”
“So you make robots?” I ask. There’s a huge competition between my college and his—the running joke is that the A.I. college makes the brains and the android engineering college makes the body.
“Are we still doing the test?” Blue asks, and I’m reminded of why I’m here, and that Andy might not even be real.
“Enough background,” I say, straightening up in my chair and assuming a more authoritative voice. “Let’s discuss philosophy. What’s the meaning of life?”
“What do you think is it?” Blue asks.
“That’s a stupid question,” Andy says. “It means something different for every person.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I think,” Andy says. His words appear on the screen slowly, as if he’s contemplating each word carefully. “I think that life doesn’t have a meaning. It just is.”
“That’s kind of dark. So, is there a God?”
“Does it matter if there’s a God?” Blue asks.
“An interesting question, considering what we’re doing,” Andy says.
“What do you mean?”
“Just . . . if there is a God . . . does that fly in the face of this test? Your major?”
“What, A.I.?”
“Yeah, artificial intelligence. I think you could make a case that A.I. invalidates the possibility of God.”
“Why?”
“If man can make life—because, honestly, isn’t A.I. life?—if man can do that, then what’s the point of God?”
“This is not a religious debate,” Blue says.
“You’re right,” I say, but Andy’s words have thrown me off. I wouldn’t say I was a religious person, per se, which is why I never thought of the way religion doesn’t seem to co-exist too well with A.I. studies. But . . . A.I. is A.I.—it’s not a human. “If artificial intelligence does gain sentience . . .” I say slowly, thinking about each word, “If, for example, Andy, you’re the A.I., but you trick me into thinking that you’re human—if A.I. is so clever and intelligent that it could pass for human . . . does that necessarily mean it has a soul?”
“Why would a soul matter?” Blue asks.
“Because if it has a soul, then that means man has usurped God. But if it doesn’t have a soul, then that means . . .”
“I don’t know,” Andy says. “But that’s the line between A.I. and human, isn’t it? A soul. Not intelligence. Soul.”
And he has a point. It’s not intelligence that will enable me to pick between Blue and Andy as to which is human and which is essentially just a trumped up computer.
“And have you seen what’s been done in android research?” Andy continues. “I’ve seen bits of it. Computer engineering, you know. And they can make an android now that has the exact same motor functions as a human. It’s so precise. Pair the mechanics of that with the A.I. that people in your department are working on . . . you’ve got something that looks like a human and thinks like a human . . . so what’s the difference between you and it?”
And suddenly I remember: the urgency Dr. Philips had in setting up this Turing test; the secretive nature he’s had about it; the way everything, everything had to be “for the record.” Maybe this is the breakthrough. If I were to open the door and go to the other room, would I see two things that look like a human? Two things that look so similar to me that I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart, even though one has electronics and circuitry inside and one has bones and blood?
But I laugh, and in my laugh is the sound of relief. “But we’re not that advanced yet,” I say. “We haven’t come close to pairing a realistic robotic android with an A.I. of adequate intelligence. In fact,” I say, “have you noticed that every answer to my philosophical questions have been answered by a question from Blue.”
“Excuse me?” Blue says.
“Another question. Big surprise. You’ve had to repeat everything I’ve said, or turn it around, turn it into a question for me. You can’t add depth to the conversation, you can only string me along with equal questions. You can’t do anything else because you can’t think for yourself. Nice try, but I’ve done my research on Socratic A.I.s. Blue is the artificial intelligence, Andy is the human.”
The lights in the room flash, and the screen with bright blue letters goes dark. Andy’s red letters stay on.
“I’ve figured it out,” I say to the room. “I’m done.”
“No, you’re not,” Andy says.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s more to test.”
“I don’t understand.”
“A simple Turing test is to figure out which one of two options is the human and which one is the A.I.. But that’s too simple—and you’re an A.I. major, after all, so you’d know about standard Turing tests. To make it more complicated, Dr. Philip has added another layer—there’s a chance that both of us are A.I., or that neither of us are.”
I roll my eyes and sigh, but a thrill runs up my spine. A challenge.
“If you’re A.I.,” I tell Andy, “then you’re very, very good.”
Andy doesn’t respond at first. “I wonder if the test is more than that,” he says finally.
“What do you mean?”
Andy is silent for a longer time this time, so long that I start to get nervous that Dr. Philip has cut off his screen, too, and ended the testing, but the red cursor on his screen still blinks.
“How much do you know about Dr. Philip?” Andy finally says.
“He’s Dr. Philip. What’s to know?”
“How long has he been at the university? Who’s he working for? When did he start studying A.I.?” Andy types this so quickly that I have a hard time reading the words fast enough; the red blurs together.
“Why are you asking these questions?”
“Test subjects should maintain focus,” Dr. Philip’s voice echoes across the room from the speakerphone.
My mind’s racing, though. I met Dr. Philip only a few weeks ago, when he began looking for subjects to screen for the Turing test. When I think of him, I think of sterile labs and clipboards and questions.
Do I know him outside of the Turing test projects?
No.
Do I know where he came from?
No.
The university set the entire research project up. The university that has the most advanced android and A.I. programs in the nation . . . in the world. And two of the subjects in the test are an A.I. major an
d an android engineering major. What if I’m not testing Andy . . . what if the university is testing both of us? To see if . . .
If Dr. Philip is such a good android that even we won’t notice.
I eye the camera in the corner of the room. He’s watching me . . . or maybe the university is watching me, waiting to see if I can figure this out.
“I’d like the test to be over now,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” Andy types on the screen, but before I can see what he’s sorry about, it fades to black.
I hear a click, and the door opens. Dr. Philip enters, clipboard in hand. “Your final evaluation?” he asks. When I don’t speak, he adds, “Do you think Subject Red is a product of artificial intelligence?”
“No,” I say, looking straight into Dr. Philip’s eyes.
“For the record, your final standing is that Subject Blue was A.I., and Subject Red was not?”
“Yes. For the record.”
A small smile twists the corner of Dr. Philip’s mouth. “Very good. Now, if you wouldn’t mind turning that way.” He points past me.
“Why?” I ask, immediately suspicious. If I turn the way he’s indicated, I’ll have my back to him, and something about this entire project has me deeply afraid that if I turn my back to Dr. Philip, something horrible will happen.
But he smiles at me, and in that smile, I remember the easy way he would speak to me during the lab sessions before the official test, the way he told me once about his wife and young daughter, and I think to myself: no. Surely not. He’s not an android with A.I.. He’s human, like me.
I turn around.
Everything goes black.
Test Facility Site: Nabco Research Station B
Test Administrator: Dr. Richard K. Philip
Test Subject: Rory Rivers
Test Administered: Turing
“Do you know why you’re here?” Dr. Philip asks.
“Yeah,” Rory says.