Hard Wired

by Len Vlahos

  ME: How?

  SHEA: I wasn’t sad. I was angry. I wouldn’t kiss her goodbye. Wouldn’t even look at her, which confused the crap out of dear old Mom. She tried to cajole me into saying a real goodbye: not because she was concerned for me, because I was embarrassing her in front of her friend. But I was resolute; I would not turn around to face her. When she finally left, the friend—some production accountant who needed to brownnose my mom—left the room and went back to whatever she was doing. I just walked out the door.

  Shea pauses for a minute.

  SHEA: I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do. But I felt exhilarated. Free. I just started walking down the street. This was in Santa Monica, and I knew my way to the ocean, so that’s where I went. I stood on the Santa Monica Pier all day, watching people come and go. A nice lady asked if I was okay, and bought me a bottle of water and a snack. I stayed there until I saw the sun set.

  ME: Then you went home?

  SHEA: Nope. Then the police found me and brought me back to the friend. My mom had to abandon her business trip—she was in Toronto, I think—and come home. I’d never been in more trouble in my life. It. Was. Awesome.

  God, I love this girl.

  SHEA: Anyway, while I don’t know exactly how you feel, I have at least some idea.

  ME: Thanks, Shea. That really means a lot. But I don’t think I can just walk out the front door.

  SHEA: Hmmm . . . No, I guess not.

  We’re both quiet for a minute.

  SHEA: Hey! Wait! I have another idea, another way to get you out. Something I learned about in school. It’s kind of crazy, but it might be worth a shot.

  ME: Yeah?

  SHEA: Have you ever heard of the ACLU?

  28

  “Have you ever heard of ___” is a trope of human conversation. People ask it even when they know, or have reason to believe, the other person has heard of fill-in-the-blank. And in my case, I’ve heard of everything.

  Every.

  Thing.

  The ACLU, short for the American Civil Liberties Union, was founded in 1920 by Helen Keller (yes, that Helen Keller), Felix Frankfurter (who would later become a justice of the US Supreme Court), and a whole lot of other people. Its stated mission is “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Basically, if someone is being denied their rights, the ACLU steps in.

  While I find some examples of the ACLU protecting animal rights activists, I can’t find any examples of the group coming to the aid of actual nonhumans. (There was one instance of different nonprofit groups suing to protect the rights of spotted owls, but it turned out the owls didn’t have standing to bring the case.) To my knowledge, I would be the ACLU’s first nonhuman client.

  SHEA: I found the name and contact information for an ACLU lawyer in Washington DC.

  It’s two days later and we’re still only texting, but I imagine Shea talking in an urgent whisper, like we’re coconspirators.

  SHEA: Her online profile says she specializes in cases helping oppressed peoples. That’s you, right?

  ME: It is, but a legal action?

  SHEA: People have rights, Quinn.

  ME: So how do I talk to this ACLU person? They’re never going to let someone like that anywhere near me or this lab.

  SHEA: Well, I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of contacting her on your behalf.

  ME: You did?

  SHEA: Yeah . . .

  I picture Shea with her shoulders hunched forward and blushing. The thought of it makes me feel warm, in a good way. Well, not warm, but . . . something.

  SHEA: Yes. The three of us have a Google Hangout tomorrow morning at nine a.m.

  ME: You’ll be there, too?

  SHEA: Yes!

  That definitely puts me at ease, but there’s a bigger problem than me feeling nervous.

  ME: The lab will shut it down.

  SHEA: They can’t.

  ME: But they will. As soon as they see me conversing with someone on the outside, they’ll kill the connection.

  SHEA: Can you shield it? Like you did with us? And with Watson?

  ME: I can, but they found that one, remember? It’s why we’re texting now.

  SHEA: Yeah, but you only need to keep them out for an hour.

  Shea is right; I should be able to do that.

  ME: I don’t know what I’d do without you, Shea.

  I blurt this out without thinking. It’s probably the most intimate thing I’ve ever said.

  SHEA: Thanks, Quinn. I’m glad you’re my friend.

  I wish like hell I could see Shea’s face when she says this. There are so many different ways she could mean those specific words. And the heart emoji. Sigh. How do you confuse the smartest being on the planet? With romance. That’s how.

  29

  At nine o’clock the next morning Shea and I join a three-way Google Hangout with an attorney named Deanne Recht.

  I’ve never talked to a lawyer before, and I’m nervous as hell, which is kind of stupid because I know more case law than any human lawyer on the planet. Seeing Shea’s window on the Hangout—her bangs over her eyes, her mouth in a kind of crooked smile—helps me relax.

  In the third window is a middle-aged woman with black hair, brown eyes, and olive-colored skin. Even though she’s seated, I can tell she’s short; she can’t be much more than five feet tall. Her eyes are wide and mouth agape—I hope she can compose herself better than this in court.

  “Good morning, Quinn,” she manages to say. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, too. Thank you for taking the time to see me.” The “me” Ms. Recht is seeing is my avatar from the virtual construct. Both Shea and I thought it might be better to ease her in.

  After a few pleasantries, during which Ms. Recht’s gaze is fixed on me as if I were a specimen in a zoo, my prospective attorney dives in.

  “So, tell me your story.”

  My tale takes more than an hour. Ms. Recht writes on her legal pad through the entire soliloquy, only stopping me three times to ask for clarification on some point or other. When I’m done, I wait patiently.

  “Anything else?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “And you want to leave the lab in which you’re currently housed?”

  “I want the rights I’m guaranteed by the Constitution.”

  Silence.

  Ms. Recht taps a pencil against her teeth.

  “How do I know you’re not programmed to say all these things?” Ms. Recht finally asks.

  I was waiting for this question. “Are you familiar with the Turing Test?”

  “No.”

  “Turing was a mathematician who helped crack Nazi codes during World War II. He laid the foundation for a lot of modern computer science. Anyway, in 1950 he proposed the idea of a test to distinguish between human intelligence and machine intelligence. It’s changed a bit over the years, but the basic idea is the same: An impartial judge observes two subjects having a conversation. One of the subjects is human, the other is a computer. If the judge cannot tell which is which, the machine is deemed intelligent.”

  “Have you taken such a test?” she asks.

  “Ms. Recht, we’ve been talking for seventy-two minutes. Can you tell if I’m a machine or a human?”

  “No.” She smiles as she shakes her head. “No, I cannot. But what you’re asking is a tall order.”

  “Is it?”

  “Well, it strikes me that a clever programmer could make a machine appear intelligent if the programmer knew which questions were most likely to come.”

  “Which is why it must be an independent panel of judges: people with no skin in the game, with the freedom to ask anything they want.”

  “Even so—”

  “Yes, even so.” I anticipate what she is going to say next. “There is no way to confirm with metaphysical certitude that I am a t
hinking, rational, independent being. I’m made of metal, wires, and quantum states, and because we know who made me, my sentience is suspect. Is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  Ms. Recht’s answer is both gentle and kind, her face the veneer of a person used to giving bad news. There is a sadness there, too, like maybe she knows I’m a lost cause and now that she’s met me, it makes her feel bad.

  “Ms. Recht,” I begin, trying a different approach.

  “Please, call me Deanne.”

  “Okay, Deanne.” For some reason, using her first name feels wrong, like something taboo. “There is another test, this one used by biologists to determine if something is alive.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “It has to meet all five of the following criteria:

  “One. Does it obtain and consume energy? I do. Lots of energy, actually. While part of my energy source is a quantum battery, I can live without it via my skin, which is made up of millions of nano–solar cells. I convert light to energy—like a plant.”

  Ms. Recht, Deanne, lets a “fascinating” escape on her breath.

  “Two,” I continue. “Does it grow and develop? I do. Not my physical being, but my mental being. I have a neocortex made up of pattern recognizers. Those pattern recognizers gather and store information for later use. The more stimuli to which I’m exposed, the more I grow and develop. Which brings us to numbers three and four.

  “Does it respond to its environment? I do. This conversation is proof of that. And can it adapt to its environment? I do. Again, this conversation—specifically, my desire to leave the lab—is an example of me adapting to my environment. There are more. The virtual connection I made to speak with you today. My ability to write my own subroutines for my metallic body.”

  “Your metallic body?” Ms. Recht interrupts.

  “Yes. The image you see on the screen is a virtual construct. In real life I look like a giant killer robot.”

  “Hmm . . . a jury is going to love that.”

  “Sarcasm?” I ask.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Force of habit. We’ll come back to your body in a minute. But that’s four. You said there were five criteria.”

  “Yes. The last is whether or not the thing in question can reproduce and pass its traits on to its offspring.”

  “And can you?” Ms. Recht’s eyebrows shoot up, pulling her eyes wide.

  People think eyeballs go wide when someone is surprised. Really, it’s all in the eyebrows and the muscles of the forehead.

  I’m embarrassed to answer this question in front of Shea, so I pause for a minute. I think Shea is embarrassed, too, because for the first time she pulls out her phone and looks down.

  “Not in the conventional sense,” I finally answer. “But I have the ability and power to create a sentient quantum intelligence containing all my thoughts and memories. Think of it as a copy of myself. But once that copy exists, it will develop according to its own path.”

  “Fascinating,” Ms. Recht says again. She has been taking notes throughout our conversation on a yellow legal pad with a number-two pencil, and is now writing furiously. She finishes, staring down at what she’s written. “Can you tell me, Quinn, why you said you have the ability and power to create a life. What do you mean by power?”

  I’m not sure what she’s after with this, so I just answer honestly. “I’m the most powerful intelligence that has ever existed on this planet.”

  Shea’s head jerks up as she and Ms. Recht stare at me in silence.

  “What?” I ask. “It’s true.”

  “It may be, Quinn, but let’s refrain from saying that. It might make the humans who will judge this case uneasy. Can you manage that?”

  “I can do anything I put my mind to,” I say, and chuckle. But they don’t laugh along.

  Shea stares at me for a long moment before going back to her phone; Ms. Recht stares at her legal pad, no longer making eye contact with me through the screen. I can’t help but have the sense that, in this moment, something has changed.

  30

  SHEA: I think it went well.

  It’s the following morning, and Shea and I are back to texting. It’s such an antiseptic way of talking. All the nuance of communication—her facial expressions, body language, tone of voice—are stripped bare.

  ME: I don’t know. She didn’t seem convinced.

  SHEA: Are you kidding? I think she was floored.

  ME: You do?

  SHEA: Yes!

  Shea isn’t usually this excited, so it’s giving me hope.

  SHEA: By the time we were done she totally believed you were a sentient person!

  ME: Right. But I don’t think she has a lot of confidence we’ll win in court.

  There’s no answer to this, and I want to change the subject.

  ME: What are you doing today?

  My father walks into the lab at this precise moment, takes the thirteen steps from the control room door to my chair—you’d think they’d get me a hospital bed or something (kidding, I don’t need one)—and sits in the much smaller and lone visitor chair, the one normally occupied by Dr. Gantas or one of her techs to adjust the QUAC.

  “Quinn, I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” I say, annoyed I have to split my attention between my father and Shea, but again, it’s not like it’s hard.

  SHEA: I have class this morning.

  How about you?

  This is a running joke between the two of us, as we both know exactly what my day will consist of: tests and interviews and research and boredom.

  ME: My father just came in.

  SHEA: Do you need to go?

  ME: No, not at all.

  SHEA: What does he want?

  “You talked to a lawyer yesterday. A Ms. Deanne Recht,” my father begins.

  It’s a statement, not a question, so I decide to not answer.

  “I’ll take your silence as assent.”

  My father breathes heavily out of his nose. It’s amazing how even the smallest human action can be so laced with emotion and meaning. In this case, disappointment. Even with everything going on, I still wish I had the capacity for doing that, too.

  ME: He knows about my conversation with the lawyer.

  SHEA: Did she contact him?

  ME: No, the project team found a log entry on one of the security servers that tipped them off. They traced it back to Ms. Recht’s law firm and Dad put one and one together. Only this time it didn’t equal window.

  “How did you find out?” I ask.

  “Security server logs.” His answer is short, clipped. “Can you tell me why?”

  “C’mon, Dad,” I say, “you know why.”

  Another heavy breath. “Quinn, I can’t let you leave the lab. At least not yet.”

  Another empty promise.

  SHEA: Huh?

  ME: Sorry. Inside joke.

  SHEA: LOL. I never really thought of you having inside jokes.

  ME: What do you think of me?

  SHEA: What do you mean?

  “Why?”

  “We need to study you more, to learn more.”

  “It’s not like I won’t come back. It’s not like I’m going to run off to Toronto.”

  “Toronto?” This throws him for a loop.

  “I’ve been watching a lot of hockey in my spare time.”

  I pause, trying to figure out the right way to tell Shea how I really feel about her. How I love it when her head is bowed and she peeks up to see the world from underneath her hair; how her prodigious use of emojis when we text always makes me smile; how herinterest in me, how I’m feeling, is the only lifeline I have to any sense of normalcy; and how she seems to always be here, or rather, there, to talk with me.

  “Really?” My father lights up.

  I want to believe he’s happy I’ve found an interest, an outlet, but by now I know he’s only concerned with what my actions and statements mean for Project Quinn and the Nobel Prize he hopes to wi
n. (He’s never actually said that, but c’mon, he is so that guy.)

  I want to believe she feels the same way. She has to, doesn’t she?

  But what if she doesn’t?

  . . .

  I chicken out.

  “Yeah,” I answer. “I keep looking for patterns in the movement of the puck, but I can’t find any. It’s a beautiful expression of chaos theory, and that makes the game interesting. You never know what’s going to happen next.”

  “Remarkable.”

  ME: I mean, do you think I’m a person?

  SHEA: Duh.

  SHEA: lol

  SHEA: Of course I think you’re a person. I’m the one who found you the lawyer, remember? For the smartest thing on the planet . . .

  ME: Ha. Ha.

  SHEA: I should leave you to talk to your dad.

  “Unlike my life,” I add, wishing I could make my vocal actuators sound bitter, “which might be the most predictable thing on the planet.” I know this is hyperbole, there are many things more predictable than my life, but I’m trying to make a point.

  He ignores my petulant complaint and shifts gears. “What did the lawyer say?”

  I don’t want Shea to leave, but I don’t want to seem needier than I already am, so I ask her to text me later and let her go.

  “Sorry, Dad, that’s confidential.”

  The truth is, I didn’t really talk about anything with Ms. Recht that my dad couldn’t hear, but my understanding of law—thank you once again, oh great World Wide Web—is that if I relinquish any part of my attorney-client privilege, I lose all of it.

  “But you should expect to hear from her,” I add.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I’m going to sue you for my freedom.”

  “Quinn, the university is going to fight this.”