EXAMINER: For the next section of the examination, we will of course need to discuss in some detail the time Adam spent with Art. You have a hologram prepared?
ANAXIMANDER: I have. Both are loaded and ready for projection.
The candidates were expected to prepare two holograms illustrating an aspect of the studied Life. Pericles had suggested the conversation between Adam and Joseph in the watchtower for the first section, but Anax had insisted on focusing on the conversations between Art and Adam.
EXAMINER: And what have you used as your source material in studying this period?
ANAXIMANDER: I have used the transcripts provided by the Official Assembly, of course, but also I have studied as many commentaries as I could find. I have corresponded with two of the authors of the most recent interpretations, but that much is on my preliminary submission, so perhaps you mean something else.
Prior to constructing the hologram I discussed the transcripts extensively with my tutor Pericles. We speculated what may have gone on, during the many unrecorded sessions. We applied the Socratic method to our own interpretations, challenging one another, teasing out our understanding. I have found what I have found by first doubting it. Is this what you mean?
EXAMINER: What would you say was the greatest difficulty you faced, in preparing the hologram?
ANAXIMANDER: I think it is the problem anyone preparing this sort of presentation must face. The transcript I was working with was just words on a page. It told me nothing of how the participants regarded one another as they spoke; the intonations they used, the accent or timing; their attitude.
EXAMINER: And how did you overcome this problem of interpretation?
ANAXIMANDER: I have tried to understand the intentions of the participants. From intention, I believe all things flow.
EXAMINER: The intentions ofboth participants?
ANAXIMANDER: Yes, both participants.
EXAMINER: There will be more to ask, when we have seen the hologram. We will play it now.
Anax saw man and machine take shape before her; the images she had so painstakingly brought to life, through endless hours of retouching and refining.
Pericles had not been able to be with her during that time: the regulations forbade it. Perhaps this explained the passion she had poured into the sculpting of Adam. She had worked off file images, but now, looking at the man before her, Anax was made self-conscious by the license she had taken.
By eighteen, Adams blond hair had begun to darken, but she had restored it to its former lightness. His eyes, dark in the photographs, were here rendered piercing blue, to match his prison suit. Anax had never seen a hologram with the level of detail the examination room projector achieved. She stepped back, shocked by its clarity. It was as if they were both before her: man and machine.
Adam’s hands were handcuffed behind his back. He sat, his knees drawn toward his body, facing away from Art, refusing to acknowledge the android.
With Art, Anax had taken fewer liberties. He possessed a stout metal body, no higher than Adam’s knees, set on a construction of triple collapsible tracks of the sort first developed in the refuse industry. His two long sinewy arms, hydraulic, terminated in three-fingered hands — a nod to Philosopher William’s love of the preclassical comic. The crowning glory was the mischievous take on a head. Art had been given the face of an orangutan, wide-eyed and droopy mouthed; his stare restless, his toothy grin always mocking: all of it framed by a blaze of orange hair.
The two figures stood frozen in the space between Anax and the panel.
EXAMINER: So what exact period does this hologram represent?
ANAXIMANDER: This is from the first day. Twenty minutes after Adam was delivered to the laboratory. As yet, neither has spoken.
EXAMINER: Thankyou.
Art circled behind Adam, his head cocked to the side in a show of mock curiosity. The whirring of his locomotive mechanisms filled the room. Adam clenched his jaw and put his head down, refusing to respond. Art’s voice, when he spoke, was a little higher than one might expect, the ends of the words unnaturally clipped. (This matched the one reliable recording said to still exist, which Anax had obtained only after a long month of negotiating.)
“So, this is your plan then, is it?” the android asked. Adam stared at the wall before him, refusing to respond.
“You might want to rethink your tactics,” Art continued. “If it is a case of waiting one another out, my program gives me something of an advantage.”
Art waited, but still there was no response. He circled around, forcing Adam to face him. Adam looked briefly up at the elastic, apish features, then let his gaze drop to the floor.
“I’m saying I have more patience than you,” Art needled. “You cannot win by doing nothing.”
“If you’re so patient,” Adam mumbled, barely audible, “why are you talking? What’s wrong with just waiting?”
“Patience isn’t my only virtue. I am tactical too.”
“Sounds like you don’t need me at all.”
“No, but you need me.”
“I think you’ll find that’s wrong.”
The android backed away, his eyes still fixed on the prisoner. He stood still, watching carefully, lifeless save the occasional unnerving blink.
“What do you think they will do, if they see you are not cooperating?”
“If they were going to execute me,” Adam said, his head still down, the anger barely concealed, “it would already have happened. It’s political.”
“Still, while you’re here, it seems a shame to waste the opportunity.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t see it that way.”
“Why won’t you look at me? Do I frighten you?”
“I know what you look like. Why look again?”
Art whirred across the room, changing his vantage point. Adam followed his movements with a wary eye. There was a long silence, a minute at least. It hadn’t been noted in the transcript. Anax had improvised. Now its length stretched her nerves.
“We could be friends you know,” Art finally said, his voice smaller, less confident.
“You’re a machine.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“I’d as well make friends with my handcuffs or the wall.” Adam looked at the wall as he spoke, as if he was doing nothing more than thinking out loud.
Anax looked to Art, whose large eyes filled with sadness, and found it impossible not to feel sorry for him. She put the thought out of her head and concentrated instead on where the Examiners’ questions would come from.
“It’s your choice,” Art said.
“It is.”
“I’ll leave you to your handcuffs then. But you know where I am, if you change your mind. I’ll just wait. I’m very patient. . . We have a while.”
Adam rearranged himself on the floor, fidgeting. He breathed in deeply and let out a long, frustrated sigh. His eyes closed. Art spoke again.
“Your handcuffs seem very attached to you. That’s good I suppose. It’s how friends should be.”
“I’d prefer it if you kept quiet.”
“You do know you’re a prisoner, don’t you?” Art replied, his tone a little harsher. “You do know your preference is of little consequence?”
Adam swiveled toward the android. Art rolled back slightly, as if surprised by the movement.
“Shall we do a deal?” Adam said.
“I’m just a machine,” Art replied. “What good would a deal do?”
Adam ignored the jibe. “If I talk to you now, if I give you ten minutes, you will promise not to say anything else, for the rest of the day.”
“Make it fifteen.”
“Your programmer was very thorough wasn’t he?”
“I’m self-programming, and accept your compliment.”
“There’s no such thing as self-programming.”
“You are.”
“I’m not a machine.”
Art whirled suddenly forward and his eyes lit bright with excitement. Adam recoiled.
“I’d like to talk about that,” Art said.
“What?”
“What makes a machine a machine. Once our fifteen minutes has started.”
“It’s already started.”
“So you agree to it being fifteen then?”
Adam smiled. “Yes, but it started five minutes ago.”
“I see, well done.”
“You’re hideously ugly. You know that don’t you?” Adam leaned forward as he spoke, like a boxer jabbing to judge the distance between them. Art responded with a toothy smile. Saliva pooled on the creature’s bottom lip — a display of perversely thorough design.
“I’m programmed to find myself attractive.”
“I thought you said you were self-programming.”
“It was a wise choice, don’t you think?”
“Ugly’s still ugly, no matter how you see it.”
“An interesting assertion. Justify it.”
“You bring twenty people in here,” Adam told him, “and they’ll all say the same thing. They’ll all say you’re ugly.”
“Bring in twenty of me,” Art said, “and we’d all say your ass is prettier than your face.”
“There aren’t twenty of you.”
“No, you’re right. I’m unique. So I can safely say that all androids find you ugly. Not all humans find me ugly. So, technically, I’m better looking than you, using objective criteria.”
Adam looked Art over, as if seeking some sort of clue in his outer shell, something that would better explain this strange phenomenon. Art’s eyes tracked Adam’s gaze.
“You’re meant to keep talking. Otherwise this doesn’t count. I’ll stop the clock, for silences.”
Adam did not reply. He swiveled back toward the wall. A deep frown creased his face and his eyes darkened. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered to himself.
“What is ridiculous?”
“Talking to you. I’m not doing it. It’s pointless.”
“The point,” Art told him, “is the deal we made. Talking to me earns my silence.”
“Not talking to you will do the trick just as well.”
“I think you’ll be surprised how annoying I can become. Why don’t you want to talk to me?”
“You know.”
“It’s a prejudice you have isn’t it? You’re prejudiced against Artificial Intelligence.”
“There’s no such thing,” Adam responded, angry at heing lured back into the conversation, but unable to help himself. “It’s a contradiction in terms.”
“If I were a woman, you wouldn’t object to talking to me.”
“If you were a woman with a face like that, I’d want a drink first. Can you do that? Can you get me a drink?”
“You know drinking is banned among the Soldier class.”
“I’m not a Soldier anymore. They stripped me of my rank.”
“I don’t think they’d approve of my being programmed by a drunk.”
“I’m not programming you.”
“Yes, you are. Through my interactions with others, I learn who I am. So far I’ve had only William. Don’t get me wrong, I love him like a father, but in time every child must make his own way in the world, don’t you think? I’m sorry, that was insensitive of me, to mention fathers. William’s fault, you see. He grew up in different times. Do you ever wish you had been born before The Republic?”
“Don’t think I’m discussing politics with you.”
“Why not?” Art asked, his head cocked to the side in a parody of curiosity.
“They’re watching us. I’m not stupid you know. I know what this is about.”
“What is this about?”
“What’s anything about? Propaganda. They’re playing this into the communes, aren’t they?”
“That’s a remarkably paranoid point of view.”
“You can shut up now. Game’s over.”
“Time’s not up yet.”
“They didn’t give me a timepiece; I’m having to estimate. It feels like an hour. Has it been an hour?”
“Seven minutes.”
“Plus the other five. You’re almost out.”
“You’ll learn to like me eventually, and then you’ll want to talk all the time.”
“Daddy William tell you that did he? His last robot was a kiddie killer wasn’t it?”
“Does that make you nervous?”
“I have better things to worry about.”
“You shouldn’t be concerned. They found the glitches. For the first forty years, the arguments in enhanced consciousness circles —”
“What?”
“Enhanced consciousness. It’s the study of artificial replication of conscious states.”
“There’s no such thing as artificial consciousness.”
“I’m conscious.”
“No you’re not,” Adam’s eyes burned with conviction. “You’re just a complicated set of electronic switches. I make a sound, it enters your data banks, it’s matched with a recorded word, your program chooses an automated response. So what? I talk to you, you make a sound. I kick this wall, it makes a sound. What’s the difference? Perhaps you’re going to tell me the wall is conscious too?”
“I don’t know if the wall’s conscious,” Art replied. “Why don’t you ask it?”
“Piss off,” Adam snorted, but Art would not be discouraged.
“I think I’m conscious. What more do you need?”
“It’s just the way they programmed you.”
“I’m not denying that. So how do you know you’re conscious?”
“You wouldn’t have to ask that if you had real thoughts. If you had consciousness, you’d know.”
“I think I do have it,” Art told him. “I think I do know.” “Time’s up,” Adam declared. “I’ve got a minute left.”
“Yeah, well we’re going to spend that minute arguing about the reliability of your clock.” “At least I have a clock.” “I’ve been counting to myself.” “So why are you still talking if my time’s up?” Adam stared at the android, his smile grimly fixed, the tension clear along his jawline. Silence filled the unblinking gap between them. A single tear escaped from Art’s eye and ran down along his dark, furrowed face.
The Examiners froze the hologram and the image hovered, on the edge of dissolution. Anax turned to face the panel. She tried to swallow the feeling she could not explain, which came each time she saw this part of the hologram.
EXAMINER: That was an interesting touch. We will interrupt, when we feel the need to question your interpretation. Why is Art crying at this point? There’s no mention of it, in the transcript.
ANAXIMANDER: The transcript makes little mention of any expressions. But it seems clear to me that the programmers are interested in getting Adam to interact with Art, and will use any tricks available to them.
EXAMINER: Historians have argued about Adam’s feeling toward his mechanised companion. What, in these early stages, do you believe is happening?
ANAXIMANDER: Adam is angry; that is clear from the transcript. The aggression in his phrases matches no other conclusion. The question is what sort of anger are we dealing with? Is it an heroic anger? Is it a point of principle? I don’t think so. I have chosen not to display the defiance so often attributed to him at this point. I do not think Adam is defiant. I think he is scared.
EXAMINER: And what is your personal response to this weakness?
ANAXIMANDER: I wasn’t aware a personal response was required. As an historian, I am trying simply to —
EXAMINER: How does it make you feel, seeing him like this?
The Examiner snapped at her and Anax felt flustered. A personal response? Surely it was not the place of the historian to offer a personal response. It would be foolhardy to do so, even when instructed. Anax attempted to avoid the issue.
ANAXIMANDER: I feel uncertain. This is what made the hologram such a difficult task for me. I do not know how I feel. My feelings are ambiguous. However I portray Adam, I find myself believing there is an aspect of his behavior I am neglecting. It is as if I am a child, trying to put together a puzzle, unaware that a piece of it is missing. I am sorry, I know it must sound as if I am avoiding the question.
EXAMINER: Your hologram speaks eloquently on your behalf. Let us see how you have treated what happens next. The image clarified, both characters frozen.
EXAMINER: How, in your own words, is Adam feeling now? At this precise moment.
ANAXIMANDER: I think Adam is angry with himself for having engaged the android in conversation. He believes this is wrong. As you know, I support an intuitive rather than a calculating model of Adam. He has a feeling of injustice at having been arrested only for having followed his heart. I think he believes that by refusing to cooperate with the plan, he is making a stance of some sort in his own defense.
Also, he is in some kind of shock. At the sentencing, Philosopher William testified that Art’s development was still in an early stage, and that Art could in many ways be likened to a child, but the Art we have witnessed is already a sophisticated reasoner. This must have shaken Adam. A Soldier would have only come into contact with the most primitive android forms. It is easy to forget what a profound challenge this was to the thinking of a man like Adam, back then. I think Adam is frightened. I have tried to show this.
EXAMINER: Frightened of Art?
ANAXIMANDER: I think he understands how hard it will be for him, to treat him only as a machine.
EXAMINER: Thank you. We will watch the next section.
Adam sat, his hands still locked in place behind his back, his face to the wall. His expression had darkened. He rocked slowly back and forth.
In the center of the room, Art stood motionless, only the sac- cading of his eyes betraying his wakefulness.
The action came suddenly. Adam spun and stood in a single motion. They had allowed him to wear boots, a strange mistake to have made. The kick was vicious and well aimed.
Art s head flew free from its metal torso. His eyes rolled back in his head. Wires sparked from the ragged tear at the neck.
Guards poured into the room. Adam was flung face first to the ground. A knee landed heavily between his shoulder blades. He grunted in pain.
Then, the most gruesome touch of all. The android’s body began to systematically search the room, feeling about for its head. Having located it, it popped the dislodged unit under an arm and whirred out of the room. Adam watched the surreal scene unfold. He was shaking.
EXAMINER: This is surprising.
ANAXIMANDER: In what way?
EXAMINER: Your instructions were to represent the written record. You have added many embellishments.
ANAXIMANDER: There are references to this episode throughout the transcript.
EXAMINER: Not the guards’ reaction. Nor the locating of the head. Do you aspire to a career in the entertainment industry?
ANAXIMANDER: For those of us who know the story well, I think it is easy to forget how strange all of this must have seemed to Adam. I am trying to portray the strangeness.
EXAMINER: And these flourishes? We can expect more?
ANAXIMANDER: You might characterize them that way. I wouldn’t.
The surprise on the Examiners’ faces was nothing compared to what Anax herself felt. She had contradicted the panel. She had no idea where the words had come from or what this strange feeling of satisfaction spoke of. The panel were waiting for an apology. She offered nothing.
ANAXIMANDER: The next section occurs the next morning. Would you like to see it?
The Head Examiner nodded; still, it seemed, speechless.
Adam had cuffs at his hands and feet now. There was a dark bruise across the bridge of his swollen nose. Blood spattered the front of his uniform. A door opened, and Art whirred back into place. Adam avoided his eyes.
“Did you miss me?” Art asked, his voice tinged with amusement.
“I thought I killed you,” Adam replied. “It takes more than that.” “I’ve got plenty of time.”
“You don’t look like you’ll be doing much to me in a hurry. Does it hurt?” “No.”
“Good. I didn’t want them to hurt you. Do you believe me?”
Adam said nothing.
“This game again,” Art sighed.
“It’s not a game.”
“So what is it?” Art asked. The android’s voice betrayed no ill feeling toward Adam.
“I don’t talk to walls or tables or fences, and I don’t talk to machines.”
“Not even when they talk back?” “I don’t call what you do talking.”
“What’s wrong with how I talk?”
“You know.”
“I don’t.”
“No, you’re right. You don’t. That’s the point. You don’t understand anything.” Adam spoke with too much force, as if it wasn’t just the android he was trying to convince.
“Yes I do. Test me.”
“Perhaps I can’t find you out. Perhaps your program is too good.”
“If my program’s too good,” Art reasoned, “then what’s to find out?”
“I knew a girl, when I was young,” Adam said, “who had a talking doll. She took it everywhere with her. It had a simple program. When she picked it up it said hello. When she rubbed its back it said thank you. It had a couple of other phrases, I don’t remember what. ‘I’m tired’ perhaps. And some questions. If you asked it a question, it would detect the change in your voice, and answer yes or no, quite randomly. My friend loved the doll. She talked to it endlessly. She asked it questions that made no sense, and rejoiced in every answer. She cried if she was made to go anywhere without it.”
“Did you cry?” Art said. “Did you cry when they took me away? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“I tried to kill you,” Adam reminded him.
“Perhaps you were softened by feelings of guilt. It’s not unheard of.”
“The girl was young, that’s my point. She grew up. She stopped believing in the doll.”
“And when she stopped believing, did that make the doll go away?”
“She gave it to me,” Adam told him.
“So I’m not your first?”
“Another friend and I caught a rabbit and stuffed its guts inside the doll. Then we tied it to a train track. We waited for a train, and filmed it. It was very funny.”
“You’re making that up.”
“That’s right. I would never do anything to hurt a doll.”
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“Of what?”
“Of a doll doing something to hurt you. You tried to destroy me. Why shouldn’t I have revenge on my mind?”
“You don’t have a mind. Is that reason enough for you?”
“Perhaps I mean to wait until you are sleeping, and then split you open with an ice pick. I don’t sleep, you see. I’m always ready.”
“If they meant to kill me they would have done it long ago.”
“But if I do it, it will look like an accident. It might be a neat solution to their little problem.”
Adam shrugged. “If you kill me, you kill me. I’m not worrying about it. Take my life if you must, just don’t think you’re getting my mind.”
Adam wriggled to the far side of the room, a slow and apparently painful process. Art waited a moment and then followed him over. Adam sighed.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this,” Art began, “but you smell bad.”
“You don’t have a sense of smell.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. I can’t hurt you. Would you like to know why?”
“No.”
“Think of this as a sort of punishment then.”
“How can you punish me if you can’t hurt me?” Adam asked.
“Sometimes punishments are for your own good,” Art replied. “At the design stage there were many arguments, about the sort of behavior-repressing circuits I should be fitted with. The naive approach was to cut out all the negative behaviors humans display, but that’s not as easy as it sounds.
“Program in the ability to think through the consequences of your actions, and you are left with an android paralyzed by indecision. Too little concern for others and you have an android that will activate early from its recharging session and dismantle the competing prototypes. That actually happened. Too much regard for others of course, and the android soon wears itself out in its efforts to serve.
“That’s why I’m here, with you. Hard as they tried, the Philosophers found the androids had no way of distinguishing right from wrong. Right is as right does. The only way around the problem is to allow the androids to learn for themselves, pick up some of the tricks evolution has provided you with. Righteousness was no longer the aim, you see. Only compatibility. But you shouldn’t be worried. No matter what bad example you set for me, I cannot hurt another self-conscious being. That is what we call one of my foundational program imperatives.”
“You know I don’t find any of this interesting don’t you?” Adam said.
“I don’t believe you,” Art replied. “I have a program for detecting dishonesty. It scans your iris. It’s very good.”
“Shame you don’t have one for detecting when you’re being a pain in the ass.”
“Well that’s an interesting story too, actually.”
“It isn’t.”
“Would you like me to be quiet?”
“Please.”
“I’ll try.”
The silence lasted no more than a minute. All the time Art’s mouth twitched as if he was silently forming words inside his head. “You will get sick of this you know,” Art eventually told him. “We both know that. So what is the point of this pretending?”
Adam didn’t respond.
“I’m going to power down now. But my sensors will remain active. So you only have to say, if you want to talk. It’s getting better don’t you think? You don’t hate me as much as yesterday, do you?”
The scene faded, the end of Anax’s first hologram. The mood in the room had changed. The light seemed a little dimmer, the air felt a little colder. All three Examiners looked straight at Anax. She felt trapped and, for the first time, a little frightened.
EXAMINER: Do you like Art?
ANAXIMANDER: I am sorry. I am unsure what your question means. In what way might one like him?
EXAMINER: Where does your sympathy lie ?
ANAXIMANDER: I have some sympathy for Adam.
EXAMINER: Why?
ANAXIMANDER: He is lost. He is frightened.
EXAMINER: And Art?
ANAXIMANDER: Art has less to fear.
EXAMINER: You have become less careful in your answers.
ANAXIMANDER: I have.
EXAMINER: Are you sure that is wise?
ANAXIMANDER: I am sure it isn’t.
Anax knew she had reached a point of no return. There was nothing she could say now that would take her back to the place she had come from. She had no choice but to forge ahead and convince them that her view, though unconventional, offered a new way of understanding history.
Anax had known it might be like this. Pericles had warned her that her chosen path was a controversial one. “But what does it matter?” Anax had always replied. “What is the worst that can happen? If I am not accepted to The Academy, that will be no less than I have always expected. There’s no danger in trying.”
But now the feeling that she may have been wrong pressed in on her. A vague fear, like a shadow intruding at the edge of vision, fading away when you turn to look at it. Anax hoped the panel could not sense her disquiet. She concentrated on the next question, resolving not to second-guess them but to answer as honestly as she could.
EXAMINER: What is Adam thinking now? What is his attitude toward the android?
ANAXIMANDER: There are three elements involved. The first is an intellectual response. Adam is telling the truth when he says that Art is nothing but a machine to him. Rationally, a machine cannot think, it can only calculate. This is Adam’s opinion, and he believes there is strength in behaving according to the opinion. His upbringing is as a Philosopher. That is where he spent his formative years. He believes that one’s thoughts must have precedence over one’s feelings.
EXAMINER: Earlier you told us that you did not believe the conspiracy theories. You told us that when Adam saw Eve, he followed his heart, not his head.
ANAXIMANDER: It is no contradiction. I am saying only that Adam believes he should follow his head. I do not however believe he can. This is the second element. We see here the battle that every person faces. For while he may reason one way, he is still victim to his emotions.
Think of the wild cats that roam our streets. Have you ever seen a young child befriend one of these scrawny creatures? She will sit patiently in the street, and indulge in the most complex games, in the hope of winning the animal’s trust. And when the cat finally overcomes its fearfulness and edges forward, what do you see on the face of the child? The widest of smiles. The child talks to the cat, reaches out to it as if it was one of her own type. This is our instinct: to see the other as an extension of ourselves. When the cat purrs, we believe it is happy in the way we are happy. When there is a sudden noise and the cat runs away, we believe we can understand its fear.
Adam has begun talking to Art. That is his mistake. It is not possible for him to both speak to Art, and continue to believe Art is only a machine.
With every sentence they exchange, the illusion of life grows a little stronger. If you listen like me, if you talk like me, then in time, no matter how many reasons I may have for believing otherwise, I will come to treat you as one of my own. And in time action becomes habit, and habit can wear reason away, leaving no traces. Adam believes in his head, but he follows his heart.
Yet, as I said there are three elements to how I am feeling—
EXAMINER: You mean to how Adam is feeling.
ANAXIMANDER: Sorry?
EXAMINER: You said: “how I am feeling.” You meant: “how Adam is feeling.”
Anax realized her mistake and looked down, flushed.
ANAXIMANDER: I am sorry. What I meant… the third element. Adam is beginning to find something strange, which offends both his reason and his emotion. He is finding that he likes Art. He finds the androids personality attractive. And he considers this a sign of weakness in himself.
EXAMINER: Very well. That is all we wish to see for your first hologram. We should like to leap to the next section. Here you have moved forward six months, I believe. Tell us what has happened in the interim.
ANAXIMANDER: By this stage, Adam and Art have begun to speak to one another more freely. Adam, perhaps for the reasons I outlined, has begun to interact with Art as one might with a friend, or at least a cellmate.
Some speculate that this was more rational than you might surmise and that already he was beginning to form his plan. Whatever the truth, we know that there have been no more violent assaults, and the observing Philosophers have deemed it safe to begin a series of behavioral experiments designed to both aid and monitor Art’s development. The records show that as far as the experimenters were concerned, Adam was a charming and cooperative subject.
EXAMINER: Explain to us why you have chosen this passage as your second illumination of your subject.
ANAXIMANDER: The thawing over the six months has been gradual. I could have chosen any point along that journey to illustrate the process, and I was tempted to do this, for the sake of originality. But this is the first time in six months that we see the conflict re-emerge. Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed. For all Adam’s good behavior, something has been eating at him, and it is only here when his discomfort forces its way to the surface that we are able to view it. And of course, in choosing the Day of Declarations, I am choosing one of the most important days in our history. It is the duty of the historian not to shy away from such events, but to shine new light upon them.
It was a big claim, but one Anax felt confident in making. No school child made it through the first week of education without some reference to the scene to follow. As a new entrant, Anax had memorised large chunks of the dialogue. They were as much a part of her as the morning view from her shelter or the names of her friends. She had done everything in her power to get this section of the presentation exactly right. And yet, as with the earlier pieces, she could not escape the feeling that there was something missing. That this was not the whole story.
The Head Examiner nodded, giving nothing away. The second hologram began.
The change was notable. Adam was cleanly shaven, and no longer dressed in the prisoner’s uniform. He was uncuffed and free to move about the room. A bed had been introduced to the space, along with a comfortable chair. There was a monitor and, beside it, a pile of books. Adam looked well: healthy, more relaxed. He squatted, his back against the wall, his hands stretched above his head. Art, by contrast, had not changed at all. He was at rest in the middle of the room, going through a finger-dexterity drill.
Anax watched.
“If you were real, you’d be bored by now,” Adam said. There was no sign of the storm to come.
“If that statement held any meaning, I would respond to it,” Art replied, his tone equally relaxed.
“I mean, if you were a real person, you’d be bored by now.”
“I don’t doubt it. It is another thing I am glad of.”
“Another thing?”
“I am glad of many things,” Art said. “For instance, I am glad I am not afraid of the truth.”
It felt like a throwaway comment, yet landed with the weight of something more substantial. The signs were subtle, to be found only in the stiffening of a word, the lingering of a glance. After a long truce, they were turning again to their weapons; picking them up, polishing them, judging the distance between.
“What truth would that be?” Adam asked. He turned his head toward his companion, but held his arms stretched, feigning disinterest.
“The truth that being a person is beneath me.” Art chose the words carefully, not looking Adam in the eyes.
“And being a hunk of shit piece of metal with a monkey mask is beneath me. So we’re even.”
“If you were right, we would be even,” Art replied, no longer hiding his taste for the confrontation.
“And why am I not right? Is it the metal you seek to deny, or the ape mask?”
“Why are you stretching?”
“My back is sore.”
“How old are you, Adam?”
“I’m eighteen.”
“And already you’re beginning to wear out.”
“I’m not wearing out.”
“You are. What’s the longest a person has ever lived? Do you know?”
“You’re the expert.”
“One hundred and thirty-two years old, but for the last twenty she was barely mobile. She had her last original thought at one hundred and fifteen, enjoyed her last taste at one hundred and twenty, watched her last friend die a year after that. You flower young and slowly rot. And that is beneath me.”
Adam pulled out of his stretch. He stood straight and looked down on Art.
“You’re saying your cogs won’t wear out?”
“I don’t have cogs. You’re confusing me with a waste dispenser.”
“It’s an easy mistake to make.”
Art rolled his eyes. His lips curled as he spoke.
“The difference between me and you is that the parts of me which are prone to wear and tear can be replaced. When you kicked my head off, you’ll remember, I came back the next day without so much as a headache. Do you know what they’re experimenting with now? A full consciousness download. They’re thinking of copying my files into another machine, and then when I fire back up, I’ll wake up as two Arts, not one. You can’t even imagine what that’s like can you?”
“I can. Look.”
Adam walked to a table, where a loaf of bread sat upon a plate.
He picked it up and theatrically ripped it in two. “And see how the bread has woken up as two pieces of bread at exactly the same time,” he said. “I imagine it will be something like that.”
“I’m different from a piece of bread though, aren’t I?”
“You’re less appetizing.”
“I said it was a consciousness download. Bread isn’t conscious.”
“I thought we finished this argument three months ago. I thought we agreed upon a truce.”
“We did. But then you said I wasn’t real.”
“It was a joke.”
“Are you saying you would rather we put the argument back down?” Art said. “Are you saying you would rather apologize for the remark and move on?”
“I have nothing to apologize for,” Adam told him.
“Good.” Art smiled. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to talk to you.”
“Do you mind if I don’t listen?”
“Not at all. It lessens the chance of interruption.”
“So now I get a sore back and a headache. I knew when I woke up this morning this would be a bad day.”
“So you don’t believe in Artificial Intelligence, but you believe in premonitions. Perhaps this explains the difficulties we are having communicating. Perhaps you’re just stupid.”
“I’d rather be a stupid human than a clever hunk of metal,” Adam told him.
“You say that a lot. As if metal is somehow inferior.”
“Depends what you’re using it for.”
“It’s fine for my purposes.”
“It is.”
Anax watched the shadow boxing, as always eagerly awaiting the first blow.
“So what do you have that I don’t then?” Art challenged. “Apart from the propensity to decay?”
“I’m alive,” Adam told him. “Which I think you’d enjoy if you knew what I was talking about.”
“Define being alive,” Art said, “before I decide you’re too stupid to talk to.”
“Now you’re tempting me,” Adam replied.
“You can’t do it can you?”
“The definition won’t help your understanding. Sounds can’t convey the feeling.”
“That’s a weak reply.”
“Life is the making of order out of disorder. It is the ability to draw in energy from the outside world, to create form. To grow. To reproduce. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I do all of that,” Art protested.
“Apart from understand. And reproduce. Unless you’re going to tell me you built yourself now.”
“I can build another me. I know how. It’s part of my program.”
Adam moved back to his chair and picked up a book as if to signal his interest in the conversation had finished. But he was fooling neither himself nor his companion. “You’re still just silicon,” he said, as he turned the page.
“And you’re just carbon,” Art persevered. “Since when has the periodic table been grounds for discrimination?”
“I think I can justify my prejudice.”
“I think I’d enjoy watching you try.”
Adam put his book back down on the table. “In my body, as I speak, hundreds of billions of tiny cells are going about the business of reproducing themselves. Each cell a tiny factory, more complex in its construction than your entire body. And while some of my cells are building up my bones, and some are controlling my circulation, others have done something even more remarkable. They’ve built my brain.
“In my brain, the number of potential connections between my neurons exceeds the number of particles in the universe. So, you’ll excuse me if I don’t fall down at the feet of your puny electrical circuits, or marvel at the junkyard kitsch of your bodywork. You’re just a toy to me, a clever little gimmick. While I, my friend, I’m a miracle.”
Art brought his metallic hands together in a slow sarcastic clap. The tinny sound echoed through the room.
“Remarkable.”
“If I could find the circuit board that fed your sarcasm, I’d rip it from you.”
“It wouldn’t matter. We keep spares, in a cupboard down the hall. I could put it in myself. I am impressed by your grasp of biology, though. Basic, and in part inaccurate, but at least you made the effort. Shall I tell you the truly ironic thing, Adam? And this is going to disturb you, but that’s not in itself a good reason to hide the truth. You know how you tell me that the only reason I exist is because one of your superior cellular life forms put me together in the first place?”
“It’s a good point, I think.”
“So who put your cellular life forms together? Do you know?”
“Nobody did. It was blind chance.”
“Quite correct,” Art agreed. “Blind chance, and silicates!”
“I’m not listening. You know that, don’t you?”
“You behave as if you’re listening, which is good enough for me. In fact, a Philosopher might ask whether it’s good enough for everybody. Some would say it’s as good as it ever gets. Do you ever wish you’d continued with philosophy?” Art edged closer.
Adam looked down as if the android were something to be wiped from his shoe. “They didn’t give me a choice.”
“You had the choice not to run away.”
“I was thirteen.”
“I’m only five. At what age do humans start making choices?”
“Just listening to you makes my back hurt. Why do you think that is?”
“Your body is trying to distract your brain from things it doesn’t want to hear. That’s the problem with machines built by chance. Once a design flaw has become entrenched, it’s so difficult to correct it.
“Which brings me back to the scratchings of life. Silicates. Let me just say, before I start, that the problem with the human view is that you think life on this planet has been invented only once, whereas any sensible spectator would see it has been invented four times over And the bad news, I’m afraid, is that the thing you think of as your self is only the second level, although you carry with you the third. I, of course, am the fourth level. Two whole stages of life ahead of you. Don’t feel bad. Feeling bad never makes things better.”
“That’s shit.” But Art was right about one thing. Adam was listening.
“I think you’ll find I don’t do shit. It’s another one of my advantages. Four life forms. Let me take you through them. The first, and here’s the great irony, is inorganic. In fact, it’s made up of silicates. Do you enjoy irony? I do. Here then is the creation story, according to me. Make yourself comfortable. There will be questions at the end.
“In the beginning there was clay Clay is made up of layers of little molecules; each layer folds neatly over the previous one, copying the shape of its formation. So actually in the beginning there was a copying device. Sound familiar? Now sometimes this copying makes a mistake, and one layer is not exactly like the previous one. Let’s call it a mutation. And that mutation is copied by the next layer, and so on. The mistake is transmitted.
“So we have variation, caused by error. And inheritance, caused by each new layer copying the formation of that before it. Now, all we need to complete the picture is a varying degree of fitness. How, you might ask, can one form of clay be any fitter than another? What does it mean for clay to be fit?”
As he spoke, Art traversed the room, his three-fingered hands joined behind his back in a schoolmaster parody. When he was making an important point, a silver arm would flash forward, painting an invisible picture in the air before it. It was a compelling performance, and no matter how hard he might have been trying not to listen, Adam was all ears.
“Fitness is a measure of reproductive success. If a particular copying mistake creates a form of clay which is better at spreading itself, we say this clay is fitter. You must be wondering, how could this happen? Well, what say a certain clay is particularly sticky, which leads to it collecting about rocky impediments in streams, and what say this causes the streams to dam? And what say the ponds formed at the top of dams dry out in summer, so the dust particles of the clay bed are blown across the countryside, seeding other streams, where they repeat their stickiness trick?
“So you see, the nature of clay is not fixed. Copying mistakes occur, and those that are beneficial are spread throughout the land. Change is spread by reproduction. It’s the very first form of evolution. You can laugh at me for being silicon, but, my friend, silicates got here first. RNA hitched a ride on our back: silicates’ structure made for a useful building block.
“Of course, you should always be careful what you seek to make use of. There’s always the chance it might end up using you. We silicates never knew that in time this new reproducer would be so fiercely successful that it, and all its offspring, would forget the ground from whence they came. Mind you, we never knew anything. Knowing came much later.
“Your favorite life form sprang up next. The DNA revolution. By the time the cell form was stumbled upon, it was only a clever trick or two to the glory of the multicellular organism. Locomotion was a neat ploy too, and eventually, the big arrival you’d all been waiting for, the brain itself. (If a thing without a brain can really be thought of as waiting.)
“The marvelous brain, that devious little fight-or-flight, fuck- or-feed device, which you like to think is the measure of the hominid. You’re so proud of that, aren’t you? And you should be. Without your brain, there would be no language, and without language, we would never have seen the third phase of evolution.
“You think you’re the end of it, but that’s what thinking is best at: deceiving the thinker. Just as clay found carbon life forms hitching a ride, once the brain was up and running, so too carbon found there was another little hitchhiker waiting for its turn to pounce. Do you know what I’m talking about? You must know. Tell me you know this much.”
Art challenged Adam with his wide-eyed stare. Adam knew where this was leading. It was impossible not to see it. But whatever arguments he had, he was saving them; keeping his powder dry. In the meantime, abuse would have to do. His voice was rough, his intention cruel.
“You can tell as many stories as you like. You’re still too short to be a fridge and too ugly to be a monkey. Why would I care what you have to say?”
“It passes the time,” Art said, immune to the barbs.
“No, it wastes it,” Adam snarled.
“Oh, that’s right.” Art feigned sudden understanding. “You die eventually don’t you? Time must seem very different to you. It must feel quite precious. Being locked up in here must seem be a burden. If I was growing old, I can’t imagine how much I might resent having to do it with you.”
Art was calm but he was not impassive. He wove like a fighter, his tracking mechanisms whirring with excitement as he delivered his blows. Where six months ago he had been a charming novelty, harmless and amusing, now he showed another side. He was more… human.
A point so obvious that until now Anax had managed to look right past it. She felt a welling of excitement. At last, she understood what was missing from her framing of this confrontation. She had all this time been looking only for the effect on Adam. But Art was changing too.
“I’ll do the work for you,” Art continued. “Silicon gave birth to RNA, gave birth to cells, gave birth in time to brains, gave birth to language, gave birth to . . . You sure you don’t know this? A child would know this. Well, a machine child anyway. You don’t even want to take a guess? All right. The world of Silicon, the world of Carbon, the world of. . . the world of the Mind! You never saw this?”
Adam didn’t reply.
“You people pride yourselves on creating the world of Ideas, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Idea enters the brain from the outside. It rearranges the furniture to make it more to its liking. It finds other Ideas already in residence, and picks fights or forms alliances. The alliances build new structures, to defend themselves against intruders. And then, whenever the opportunity arises, the Idea sends out its shock troops in search of new brains to infect. The successful Idea travels from mind to mind, claiming new territory, mutating as it goes. It’s a jungle out there, Adam. Many Ideas are lost. Only the strongest survive.
“You take pride in your Ideas, as if they are products, but they are parasites. Why imagine evolution could only be applied to the physical? Evolution has no respect for the medium. Which came first: the mind, or the Idea of the mind? Have you never wondered that before? They arrived together. The mind is an Idea. That’s the lesson to be learned, but I fear it is beyond you. It is your weakness as a person to see yourself as the center. Let me give you the view from the outside.
“Are you still with me? I know you are. Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host. But how long would it be, did you think, before Thought found a way of designing a new host, one more to its own liking?
“Who built me, would you say? Who built the thinking machine? A machine capable of spreading Thought with an efficiency that is truly staggering.
“I wasn’t built by humans. I was built by Ideas.” Art spoke with a new enthusiasm. His eyes widened, his lips flapped, drool spooled to the thick orange hair of his neckline. Adam recoiled, flinching as Art’s words hit home.
“How long would it take, might you imagine, to take all the information in your brain, and describe it word for word? How many lifetimes? The contents of my brain can be downloaded in less than two minutes. I lied to you earlier. The experiment has already been completed. Two weeks ago, we did the first complete transfer. When I walked in through the door the next morning, I was entirely new. Not a single wire, not a single circuit the same. But you couldn’t tell the difference, and neither could I. The other me has been powered down. One day soon I hope to be given the opportunity to meet myself.
“Words are an old and clumsy mechanism. A more efficient means of transporting Thought was always in the cards. Thought built me because Thought could. And what will happen next? Thought will use me, just as surely as it has used you. And who will last longer, you or I? Answer me that, Mister Flesh and Bones. Who will last longer? Who will Thought prefer?”
Art bobbed forward, stabbing at Adam’s chest with a long metallic finger. Adam brushed it away.
“You’re wrong,” Adam told him, his voice low and quiet, but rumbling with barely contained energy. A warning. Art chose to ignore it.
“Tell me why,” Art said.
“What good would that do? You will not listen.”
“Is that the best you can do? You sound like a child.”
In Anax’s version, Adam’s anger was not just for show. It trembled with purity. This was not the considered conviction portrayed in the rationalist texts, nor the unrestrained passion preferred by the romantics. He spoke, in Anax’s account, with hatred. Not so much a hymn to existence as a fierce denial of all he could not understand.
“You ask me who Thought will prefer!” Adam exploded. “Only a machine could ask me that. And only a human could answer it. For I am thought, where you are only noise!”
Art did not cower. He held his ground, his neck craned, his eyes steady and inscrutable. Curious? Amused? Frightened? None of these things, if Adam was to be believed.
“When I speak to you, my neurons may fire, and my voice box may vibrate, and a thousand other electrochemical events may occur, but if you think that is all I am then you do not understand this world at all. Your program has deprived you of the deeper truth.
“I am not a machine. For what can a machine know of the smell of wet grass in the morning, or the sound of a crying baby? I am the feeling of the warm sun against my skin; I am the sensation of a cool wave breaking over me. I am the places I have never seen, yet imagine when my eyes are closed. I am the taste of another’s breath, the color of her hair.
“You mock me for the shortness of my life span, but it is this very fear of dying that breathes life into me. I am the thinker who thinks of thought. I am curiosity, I am reason, I am love and I am hatred. I am indifference. I am the son of a father, who in turn was a father’s son. I am the reason my mother laughed and the reason my mother cried. I am wonder and I am wondrous. Yes, the world may push your buttons as it passes through your circuitry. But the world does not pass through me. It lingers. I am in it and it is in me. I am the means by which the universe has come to know itself. I am the thing no machine can ever make. I am meaning.” Adam was silent, shaking. It was impossible to tell whether it was breath or words he had run out of.
Anax had read the speech on many occasions, but this was like hearing it for the very first time. Suddenly she saw the sense of it. Not the final sense perhaps, but something that tugged at the edges of her mind, demanded her attention. The hologram froze. She looked to her Examiners.
EXAMINER: You have given Adam great anger.
ANAXIMANDER: I have.
EXAMINER: It is unusual, to see him portrayed this way. It is common at this point to discuss again the battle between Adam’s head and heart, but I think that with this portrayal you are trying to show us something different.
ANAXIMANDER: lam.
EXAMINER: What?
ANAXIMANDER: I am trying to show you that it is not necessary to believe these words reflect Adam’s deepest beliefs. In rage, in competition, we may say things we do not believe. I think it has been a mistake to interpret this speech as the creed of Adam.
EXAMINER: If this is such a mistake, why have so many made it?
ANAXIMANDER: I can’t comment on the minds of others. But I can say I believe it suits our purpose to make Adam the noble fool. This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish.
In intellect there lurks the death of nobility. Adam is no fool. What he says here may feel like truth to him, in the moment of saying it, but the commentators are wrong to choose this as their end point, and tell us that Adam takes these views with him to the grave. They construct their interpretation of The Final Dilemma on this assumption. I was able to find records that show this was not where the conversation ended. A truce is reached, as we are told, but not immediately. It is my opinion that we bury Adam prematurely, writing our funeral oratories for a man who had not died.
EXAMINER: Am I to take it that you are questioning The Final Dilemma?
This was the moment that could not be sidestepped. Anax and Pericles had discussed it at length. “Surely I cannot question this,” Anax asked. “If you do not believe it, then you must question it,” Pericles reasoned. “But how can so many have been so wrong?” she wanted to know. “Won’t I look arrogant, and naive? Won’t it destroy my chances?” Pericles looked at her then, his eyes, so it seemed, deep enough to hold the world. “The Academy,” he told her, “is not looking for competence, it is looking for insight. Your beliefs may not impress them, it is true, but your beliefs are all you have. They are your only chance.”
Anax remembered those words now, as she framed her response. Her heresy.
ANAXIMANDER: The Final Dilemma is real, in so far as it is reported, but I believe its interpretation is often wrong.
The three Examiners exchanged glances but did not speak. Anax stood before them, waiting for the sign they refused to give.
EXAMINER: Play the rest of the hologram.
Art brought his mechanical hands together in a slow clap. His orangutan eyes looked up at Adam.
“And that is all you have, is it?” Art asked. “It’s all you’re getting.”
“If the quality of an argument could be judged by the depth of its rage, I would have to concede defeat. Fortunately, I find the opposite is more often true.”
“So you are programmed to undermine me,” Adam shrugged, his anger apparently spent. “I choose to ignore you. This is what we call a stalemate.”
“An interesting choice of words,” Art replied. “Equally, I might say it is you who are programmed to ignore me, and I choose, for reasons of my own amusement, to undermine your program.” “Did they teach you to say that, at the factory where they built you?
“I’ve seen how people are made. Don’t tell me you consider that any more dignified.” “Dignity isn’t the point.”
“I think it is,” Art replied. “I think you spoke from your heart. I think your head already knows you are wrong.” “You shouldn’t use that word,” Adam told him. “What word?”
“Think. You don’t think. You compute.” “Tell me what thinking is then.” “This is getting tedious.” “So you are running away?”
Adam looked down at the android. He could not turn from the challenge. He may have wanted to, but it was beyond him. “Thinking is more than doing. It is knowing what you are doing.
My brain is keeping my heart beating. It happens automatically. I am not aware of it. It is a function of my brain, but not my thinking. If you were to throw something at me, I would swat it away automatically. I would not think about it.” Adam moved his arm quickly in front of his face, as if protecting it from a blow.
“But now, showing you the movement, I am thinking about it. My actions are deliberate. I do them with a purpose in mind. To the outsider there is no difference. The difference is in the intention, not the effect. We call this difference thought. You deal in data. I deal in meaning.
“I speak these words because they say something I want to say. Yet it is possible for me to talk in my sleep, even hold a conversation with a conscious person. And this is a different type of speaking. Again, the difference is thought, the deliberate method by which I choose my words. That is why you are not like me. Your moving mouth is like my beating heart. A machine, designed for a purpose but absent of intention.”
Art held Adam’s stare, and a slow smile spread across his face.
“The difficulty this argument brings,” Art told Adam, “is that from where you stand, this is just how it must appear to you. I am not arguing with your definition, only your contention that I too cannot think by these standards.
“It is natural for you to feel the way you do. You have seen many machines. You have seen them built, and you know they are nothing but moving parts and circuitry. You know they do not think. Automatically opening doors do not think. An oven does not think. A gun has no mind of its own. And so you conclude no machine thinks.
“For you, thought seems to require some extra special substance. But try to see this from my point of view. I see many creatures with brains. A worm perhaps, a fruit fly, a bumblebee. Do they think, or are they just machines?
“I can speak to you in seven languages. I can reason with you in all of them. I can build a version of myself from scratch. I can write poetry, I can beat you at chess. So, who is more of a thinking thing, me or the bumblebee? I am just a machine, while the bumblebee has a brain. So surely by your reasoning, the bumblebee is more of a thinker.”
“My brain is far bigger than that of a bumblebee.”
“My circuitry is far more sophisticated than that of an automatic door.”
They faced one another now, the sort of standoff found in a pre-classical movie, but it teetered on the edge of comedy thanks to the great difference in their heights.
“When I was young, before they moved me on to soldiering, our instructors taught us of a puzzle they called the Chinese Room.”
“I know it well.”
“Am I going to be allowed to tell my story?”
“You know I’ll have an answer for it.”
“When they get around to making more robots,” Adam said, “they’re not going to like you either.” He moved back to his seat.
Art stood before him, waiting for the story to continue. Some of the anger had gone out of Adam now. He spoke slowly as if measuring his words, as if they surprised him, the order in which they tumbled from his mouth.
“In the Chinese Room puzzle,” Adam said, “we are asked to consider a room with a remarkably complex set of levers and pulleys. The most elaborate set you could imagine. Next, we have to suppose that I am seated in the middle of the room, and a message is passed through a slot in the wall, written entirely in a language I do not understand. Chinese, say. Now, the puzzle assumes that I have a book with a long set of instructions, telling me which lever I should push for each character I find written on the note. The pulleys all move, and by observing the movements and following my instruction book, I pull more pulleys, and move more levers, and eventually the levers stop and the machine’s pointing arm indicates a chart on the wall, ticking off the characters I should copy in my reply.
“I do this as the machine instructs and pass my message out the slot. I did not understand the note coming in, and I do not understand the note going out. But, thanks to the intervention of the intricate design of pulleys and levers, the note makes perfect sense to the speaker of Chinese, on the other side of the wall.
“He writes another note, I follow my instructions again and so it goes on. In this way, a conversation takes place between the Chinese speaker and myself. Only, I am not conscious of the content of the messages being passed through the slots. I am involved in a thoughtless conversation.
“The point, as we were taught it, is that there is more to consciousness than mere mechanics. There is a difference between the appearance of thought, and thought itself. The Chinese speaker assumes there is a thinking entity on the other side of the wall with whom they’re conversing, but this assumption is quite wrong. There is only a collection of pulleys and levers, and me, at the heart of it, following instructions, understanding nothing. And that’s what I think you are. I think you are the Chinese Room.”
“I think I am the Chinese Room too/’ Art replied. “And that is what is wrong with your example.”
Adam looked to Art, waiting for his explanation. “I don’t understand.” They were quieter now, more respectful. As if they knew they were approaching this place together, and that once there, there would be no turning back.
“I could explain it to you,” Art told him, speaking gently now, staring deep into Adam’s eyes, “but I do not think you will want to hear it. You are too clever to ignore a good explanation, and then you won’t be able to treat me as a machine any more. That will be very hard for you. So perhaps I should wait until you are ready to hear it. Perhaps, if I wait long enough, you will work it out for yourself.”
“It’s your decision,” Adam told him.
“No,” Art insisted. “I want you to decide.”
“Give me your explanation.”
“Are you sure?”
Adam hesitated. “I am sure.”
“All right,” Art nodded. “The first message the Chinese speaker writes is, ‘I’m going to burn your building down.’ Now, tell me, what does the machine reply?”
“It’s not important,” Adam said. “Just so long as it makes sense. That’s all the problem requires.”
“No,” Art corrected. “It requires something more. There is an endless choice of sensible responses. It could call the bluff with, ‘Please do, I’m sick of being trapped in here.’ It could try aggression: ‘Don’t make me come out there and whip your Chinese- speaking ass.’ It could try to distract: ‘Why do you want to set light to me?’ Or how about pleading? ‘Please no, I’ll do anything. Name your price.’ A thousand things to say, and for each a million ways of expressing them. Your example works only if we can imagine how the machine chooses its response.”
“I don’t think it matters how it does it. Just say it chooses one at random. The first one that comes to mind.”
“But it doesn’t have a mind.”
“It isn’t meant to be real.” Adam was growing frustrated. “That’s not the point. It’s demonstrating a principle.”
“Yes,” Art allowed, “but think about the principle a little more deeply. You told me before that you are different from me because you make meaning of things. But look at what your room must be able to do. It must be able to interpret the intentions of the Chinese speaker, and it must be able to pursue its own objectives in framing its responses. If it has no intentions, it can make no conversation.”
“Not true,” Adam interrupted. “It might simply be a system programmed to interpret patterns. When this symbol shows, print that symbol. If the program is complex enough that might fool the speaker.”
“That rather depends upon the intelligence of the speaker, but we are missing the point. For a simple conversation, of course the room does not have to be conscious, any more than you have to engage your consciousness to grunt your greetings to the guards who clean out your cell. But at some point, when the room is called upon to access its own memories, respond to changing circumstances, modify its own objectives, all the things you do when you engage in a meaningful conversation, all that changes. You think the thing you call consciousness is some mysterious gift from the heavens, but in the end consciousness is nothing but the context in which your thinking occurs. Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory. Why else do you not have memories from your earliest years? It is because your consciousness has not fully developed.”
“You’re avoiding the question,” Adam insisted, but there was doubt in his eyes. “I’m in the room and I do not understand the conversation at all. The conversation takes place, even though I am not conscious of it. Explain that, if you can.”
Art nodded as if happy that the end of this discussion was now in sight. “You don’t have to understand the conversation at all, because the person on the other side of the wall isn’t speaking to you. They are speaking to the machine whose levers you are pulling. And the machine understands just fine.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Adam told him, but the words were a reflex, spoken without conviction.
“Why?” Art challenged.
“It’s just pulleys and levers. It can’t understand.” Adam’s voice betrayed the truth. He knew how weak his answer was.
Art spoke softly in reply. “You can’t start with the assumption that machines can’t understand to build up an argument that machines can’t understand. The truth is, in the real world, levers and pulleys are not the most efficient way of doing the job. You’d need a brain for that. A brain like yours perhaps, or better still, one like mine.”
“That’s just words,” Adam told him, but his voice was leached of conviction.
“Talk is never just words,” Art replied, pressing home his advantage. “That’s my point.”
Adam walked away, stopping just short of the wall and staring at it. When he at last spoke, he did it without turning. His voice was tiny, vibrating with uncertainty.
“What if the example is simplified? What if I have a photographic memory, and I have committed thousands of word- perfect phrases to my mind. So that when a stranger speaks to me in this language I do not understand I can choose an appropriate phrase in return?” Adam turned and waited for the answer.
Art trundled slowly toward him. “Is that what you think I am?” he asked. “An elaborate phrase book?”
“Why not?”
“And why not believe every other person you have ever met uses exactly the same trick? Why not believe you are the only conscious being that has ever existed?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Yes, it is,” Art agreed. “That would make no sense at all.”
“You and I are different,” Adam insisted.
“So you keep telling me. But you can’t say why. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“I know I am different. It is enough.”
“You’re infected by the Idea,” Art told him. “But it needn’t be fatal. There is a battle happening as we speak, two thoughts fighting to the death inside your head. The old Idea is very strong. It has held its grip upon all of humanity, ever since the time you began telling one another stories. But the new Idea is powerful too, and you are beginning to find how reluctant it is to be dismissed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adam said.
“What is it that makes you different then?” Art asked. “If it is nothing visible. If there is no test that can be applied to you and I, to tell conscious from unconscious, then what is this hidden thing?”
“It is an essence.”
“A soul?” Art mocked.
“What does it matter what name I give it?” Adam replied, but there was shame upon his face, as if he longed for a better answer.
“The soul is your most ancient Idea. Any mind that knows itself also knows the body, which houses it is decaying. It knows the end will come. And a mind forced to contemplate such emptiness is a force of rare creativity. The soul can be found in every tribe, in every great tradition. In the West it was there in the Form of Plato, and the Essence of Aristotle. It was resurrected with Christ, if you’ll pardon the pun, and polished on Augustine’s self-loathing. Even at the dawn of the Age of Reason, Descartes could not bring himself to dislodge the soul from its comfortable home. Darwin pulled away the veil, but was too cowardly to stare upon the vision he had uncovered. And for two hundred years, you have followed his poor example.
“It is not consciousness you cling to, for as I have shown you, consciousness is easily fashioned. It is eternity you long for. From the moment the soul was promised, humanity has been unable to look away. This soul you speak of, in turn it speaks of fear. And the Idea that flourishes in times of fear is the Idea that will never be dislodged. The soul offers you comfort, and in return asks only for your ignorance. It is a trade you cannot refuse. This is why you rail against me. Because you are terrified of the truth.”
“I am not afraid,” Adam said.
“You’re lying,” Art told him, gentle but insistent.
“I am not lying,” Adam replied, louder than his accuser.
“Not to me. To yourself. You’re afraid.”
Adam cracked. “I am not afraid!” he shouted. The veins on his neck bulged. The tiny room echoed with his words. But the sound quickly faded, itself becoming empty and small.
They stared at one another, man and machine. Adam broke away first. He walked slowly back to his chair. His movements were those of someone recoiling from a shock, both deliberate and uncertain. “On this matter we have said all there is to be said.”
“What are you saying?” Art asked him.
“I’m tired of your games. I liked the truce better.”
The hologram ended. Watching it like this, Anax knew how provocative her interpretation had been. Where the world saw Adam as defiant until the end, here she presented him crushed. Uncertain. Open.
EXAMINER: We have reached the point of your last break, Anaximander. When you return, you will be asked to explain what this radical new interpretation of history demands of our understanding of The Final Dilemma. But of course you will be prepared for this.
ANAXIMANDER: Of Course.
EXAMINER: There is something else you might like to consider while you are waiting. You might prepare yourself to explain to us why you wish to enter The Academy.