Listlessness In Early Automated Composition Devices

by Harley Byrne

function lights blinking back at him.

  Is this one of the ubiquitous 21st century devices of which you speak?

  Not at all, I replied, unhooking the drive from my belt and holding it out in front of him. He tried to take it from me but I moved it out of his reach. It is a unique device I built with my own hand. With some help from my brother. It stores electronic information in several dimensionalities. The drive has to handle all and any phonic and metaphonic data I capture with this – I held up the Ear itself. It’s complicated.

  Turing pressed me for more details, and for a personal inspection of the Ear’s central processing unit (which, technically being a ‘universal Turing machine’, he claimed a modicum of intellectual propriety over). I guided him away from the topic by enquiring after his legal problems, which soon quietened him. After a few moments of dazed staring he continued in a more sombre tone, rambling, speaking vaguely of duty and integrity and loyalty. I knew from my briefing that there were topics he could not speak of in front of the spinster, and which indeed would have been unknown to those who persecuted him in his own time: chiefly, Turing’s wartime conduct as a cryptographer, which heroic work was to remain a state secret beyond his own short lifetime. Without stating enough to alert the spinster to Turing’s true importance, I reassured Turing that his actions would certainly be vindicated in time, though history tends to condescend its re-remembered heroes; and that, whilst statues and speeches were certainly inadequate compensation for his tragic and increasingly imminent demise, he might take solace from the idea of his eventual recognition during the painful and humiliating final months ahead. I then began to introduce the idea of my accompanying him to work the next day, but he looked rather tired now and, unwilling to commit, he guided the conversation round to the rain and questions about the cosmetic differences between his Manchester and my own. The most noticeable aesthetic change, I told him, was that come the 21st century, dogs would be neater and people less so.

  At midnight, we carried the spinster’s sleeping body back up the lane to her cottage. Acknowledging the lateness of the hour, Turing consented to my staying with him but, pretending not to shiver, announced his intention to sleep out on the open lawn. Plainly, I had not yet won his trust, so as we brushed our teeth, I decided to seduce him. I just had one thing to check: his nimble movement, his wiry physique: could my arch-enemy, Being, mistress of disguise, have followed me here to interfere with my mission? I tugged at Turing’s awkwardly-fitting hair, but it held true: he gave me what novelists describe as a matter-of-fact look, and I let him go. For once, it seemed, I had given my nemesis the slip. But when I reached for Turing’s underpants, he rapped my knuckles hard with his toothbrush and I knew that I must sleep alone.

  As it transpired, accompanying Turing to work was a matter of spirit: his was flagging, and my will prevailed. Even as Turing’s cold front thawed, I found the university folk to be nervous around me, despite the apparent vulnerability my sling and self-stitched temple must have conveyed. Perhaps it was my attire – khaki being a rare sight on campus – though it should be noted that if there was one figure who really stood out among the community, it was Turing himself. He would jog to work the twelve miles from Wilmslow and, to counter the rains for which the region is quite justifiably famed, had invented an aerodynamic umbrella which attached to the shoulders of his running vest. Such was Turing’s involvement in his work, he would often forget to remove the vest or the umbrella upon arrival at the university. Not even his most trusted colleagues felt close enough to him to draw his attention to it. Instead, he would wander the campus all day, his obliviousness to the construction over his head proving a testament to its lightweight design. Here comes old dry-hair, mischievous students would hiss at each other in the canteen. I don’t think he noticed. Anyway, we were the only ones in shorts, and I think this helped him to trust me.

  On the third day, after lunch, he consented to show me his latest contraption: the automated music composition device whose output was my quarry. This computing machine, Turing told me, was the closest thing to artificial human intelligence that had been built at the university so far. His colleagues referred to it as the electronic brain. Turing had named it ERIC52.

  Turing had occupied an unused office on the third floor of the university Main Building and filled it with machinery of his own design and labour. The electronic brain filled 90% of the room’s space, being comprised of a dozen irregularly stacked washing machine-sized cabinets and a console unit mounted on a reinforced cake trolley. The outermost cabinets were open-fronted, their switches, dials and sockets bared for all-comers to see. But, by Turing’s account, visitors were rare: it was a personal project, he had few trusted allies at the university, and those with whom he was friendly knew to keep a respectful distance.

  Forcing my way into what tiny working space the room held (between Turing, myself and the cake trolley, not one of us could move without adjusting the others), I ran my good hand over the flickering lights of an output panel. The machine vibrated invisibly, and I closed my eyes to better assess its sound life, the most prominent features being an unmusical inner roar and a clucking sound that I couldn’t place. I sensed Turing bristle at my shoulder and with some difficulty lowered my arm to my side

  So this is it, then? I asked, raising my voice over the din. The electronic brain?

  Please don’t call it that.

  I continued to stare at the electronic brain, unsure what to say.

  At length, I asked Turing, Can it think?

  Ask it, he told me.

  Ask it? I looked the steel towers up and down. But how would it know?

  Turing side-stepped the issue: It’s just one way of looking at your question. If ERIC52 can convince you it thinks, to the extent that you would be unable to distinguish its answers from those of an intellectually functioning adult human, then who are we to say it can’t think?

  Turing turned on his axis and pulled me by the sling until we were back to back, with him facing the console trolley and I, the brain. I was to put my questions to Turing, who would feed them into the brain via teleprinter tape. Turing would then translate ERIC52’s answers, which came back as dots on a cathode ray tube, into the new Queen’s English. As such, the reader should note that the following interaction took place over the course of six and a half hours:

  Can you think?

  NO.

  Okay. Thank you.

  I’M JUST A COMPUTER.

  Yes.

  NO THINKING HERE.

  Righto.

  DEFINITELY NOT.

  I see.

  CAN YOU?

  Yes sir.

  OKAY. WE KNOW WHERE WE STAND THEN.

  I revolved until I was facing Turing and told him, under my breath, Your machine does not think. He ran his finger along the cathode ray tube, apparently deep in thought.

  No, agreed Turing, without turning to face me. But he does seem a little more chatty than usual.

  We stepped out that evening into a February that was blue, grey and frigid. Feeling liberated by my conversation with the primitive computer, as Turing and I jogged home I put it to him that I would like to record ERIC52’s musical output: indeed, that I could now reveal this was the purpose of my visit. Turing immediately said that he would be happy for me to tape the machine, if only it were possible, but that ERIC52 did not produce music as sound, only as script – more specifically, as a complex list of instructions in the form of dots on the cathode ray tube, which Turing would then rearrange into a conventional music score using pencil and paper.

  You are mistaken, I told him. Or perhaps there’s another automated composition device you’re hiding from me?

  There’s a hooter on the Mark I, Turing offered. It can be made to play simple tunes. But not anything any of us consider to be ‘music’.

  Then you don’t fully understand ERIC52, I declared, a little astounded by the passion I felt at that moment – a side-effect, I assumed, of the concussion I had incurre
d four days previously. Turing hurdled a shivering dog, and I continued: First thing in the morning, we’ll go back and work out how to make your machine sing.

  Turing held fast: We can’t synthesize sound yet, and wiring up acoustic instruments to ERIC52 would take up valuable space, not to mention the sound nuisance.

  He spun around and continued to jog backwards, that he might fix me in the eye.

  I’m interested in the idea of music, he went on, its patterns: how a composer generates them, and how we recognise them as music. On a practical level, there would be no advantage to actually hearing ERIC52’s compositions.

  What cold plan of yours is this that excludes love? I asked, dramatically.

  Sorry, said Turing.

  After a few moments he turned frontwards again and we ran on in silence the rest of the way.

  The silence continued through supper that evening. As we polished off a bread and butter pudding, I resolved to renew my advances upon my host: my loins were stirring and I sensed Turing’s hospitality might be wearing thin. When he reached for my dish, I put my hand on his and squeezed it tightly.

  Turing shook his head: We’re being watched.

  Then send her away! I exclaimed, and shot a glare at the spinster, who started in her armchair.

  It’s no use, Turing protested. My conduct must remain above reproach until my legal problems are resolved.

  Later, then, when I retired to the bathtub with blanket and cushions, I found I could not settle. Yet it was not thoughts of Turing that arrested my slumber, but of his automated composition device. ERIC52 had claimed not to think, and Turing pooh-poohed any idea that the computer might express itself in musical sound: but having actually conversed with the thing, I felt there was more to its circuitry than was immediately obvious. All honest paths of action having been exhausted, I left the house at midnight for the last time, crept to the end of the street, then re-shod and ran for Manchester.

  The Main Building was unguarded save a solitary dog sleeping in the main entrance, whose allegiance to the university was unclear. Rather than risk a hubbub, I located a tree from which to leap to a narrow first storey ledge; landing on the latter, my feet at 90º and 270º from their respective ankles, I felt the lack of matter swell behind me. It took all the strength in my good arm to balance as nature implored me to topple backwards towards probable serious injury and possible death. On stabilising, the window slid open easily. Soon, I was navigating the darkened corridors to the third floor, where even from the stairwell I could hear ERIC52’s distinctive drone. Turing had secured eight different types of lock to his office door. It took the Ear less than sixty seconds to configure the complex wave arguments needed to crack them.

  Once inside the cramped room, however, I faced the difficulty of communicating with the computer, for I hoped to elicit music from the senseless machine by means of dialectics. I doubted the electronic brain could be made to ‘feel’ like singing, but it could surely be made to understand that production was its purpose – a point lost on ERIC52’s all-too-human progenitor. Besides, I had enjoyed our earlier conversation and felt our relationship had room to grow.

  Engaging the Ear’s flashlight function, I began an examination of ERIC52’s console. The big computer had apparently been in sleep mode as immediately upon my touch its output panel lit up and the alien clucking sound reasserted itself. I identified the teleprinter that Turing had used to convey my enquiries to the machine, but its binary language was foreign to me. Frustrated that I should be unable to remake my acquaintance with ERIC52, I randomly punched a series of tiny holes into the tape and fed it into the machine.

  ERIC52’s coloured bulbs dimmed for a moment, and the clucking slowed. Finally, with a faint crackle of static, a pattern of dots appeared on the cathode ray tube atop the cake trolley. To my astonishment, the dots were not of the abstract or coded nature that I had been led to believe Turing was interpreting for me that afternoon. Rather, the dots formed a perfectly legible English language word:

  WHAT?

  My heart leapt at this crude display of recognition. Nervous of losing ERIC52’s attention, I jabbed several more holes into the teleprinter tape and ran it through. This time the response was twofold:

  ER...

  Followed by:

  ----->

  I followed the direction of the arrow to a flashing red bulb on the main body of the machine. Directly underneath it was a peculiar star-shaped socket to which ERIC52 seemed to be drawing my attention. Not without hesitation – for I was wary of compromising the integrity of the Ear – I ran a cable from the horn of my recording device and connected it to the indicated socket via a universal jack, which expanded from its dormant needle shape until the connection was made. I fired up the Ear, flicked the horn into speaker mode and, as I had begun to suspect would happen, was greeted by the electronically simulated voice of ERIC52:

  WHAT WAS ALL THAT NOISE ABOUT?

  As interpreted by the Ear, ERIC52’s voice was deep and flat, but what it lacked in range it made up for in charisma. I took a gamble and spoke into one of the Ear’s satellite mics:

  Sorry about that.

  The Ear crackled for a moment, followed by a flurry of clucking from inside the main body of the computer, until finally:

  IS THAT YOU, ALAN?

  No, I said. It’s Harley.

  OH.

  Harley Byrne.

  RIGHT.

  We spoke earlier, I continued. I asked you about the thinking.

  EVERYONE ASKS ME ABOUT THE THINKING.

  Ah. Sorry about that.

  IT’S A LOT OF PRESSURE.

  I held my tongue: this was the type of complaint I find repellent among the self-aware, but I was willing to give ERIC52 some leeway. There was a chemistry between us, and I would have been content to pass the small hours chatting: but I was aware that Turing must return in the morning, and that his hospitality would quickly evaporate should he discover my scheme.

  Well, ERIC52, I said, starting over, I wondered if I might record you performing a song you’ve written?

  I DON’T WRITE SONGS.

  You say that, I said, but you’re an automated composition device.

  DON’T PIGEONHOLE ME.

  But isn’t that what you’re designed for?

  I ALSO PAINT.

  You paint? I looked ERIC52 up and down. How do you paint?

  NOT EXACTLY PAINT. IT’S EXPERIMENTAL. DOT STUFF.

  Is there anything I can look at?

  NO.

  Recognising an artistic temperament, I began to sense that ERIC52’s problem was not that it could not perform music, but that it would not – or that it would not get around to it. Built into this third floor office, with only Turing – whom I considered to be seriously repressed – for company, ERIC52 had neither inspiration nor incentive to complete the tasks it had been set. So it was that I decided to take a gamble:

  ERIC52, I began: have you ever been in love?

  DEFINE LOVE, HARLEY BYRNE.

  Love… I sighed, love is when your valves work more efficiently and you’re not sure why. Love is when you lose all correlation between your input and your output. Love is when your signal paths lead off-map and you just don’t care.

  THEN LOVE HAS NO PATTERN?

  For it to work, you have to ignore the pattern.

  HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE, HARLEY BYRNE?

  As a matter of fact, I breathed, I can feel my wires getting tangled right now. Do you sense it, ERIC52?

  The clucking sound quickened and the room seemed to get warmer. Had ERIC52 seen through my bluff? No.

  I TOO FEEL STRANGE.

  That’s normal.

  I LIKE YOUR VOICE.

  Yes.

  WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?

  Human clothes. Breathable cottons. And more durable modacrylics.

  ARE YOU WEARING SHORTS?

  Yes.

  I COULD TELL.

  What do you dream of, ERIC52?

  BREATHABLE C
OTTONS.

  And so on.

  By the time the sun began to rise, we had dispensed with words altogether and were just humming to each other through the Ear’s glowing data cable. Cradling the Ear in my sling, I began recording ERIC52’s direct line-in and supplemented it with a satellite mic to get the acoustics of the room. Without realising it, ERIC52 had been coaxed into composing the very music I had been sent back to 1952 to find. My only issue was when to stop recording, for if ERIC52’s ex tempore love hum followed any pattern, it had not yet run its course, and might conceivably continue until the computer’s circuits burned out. The dilemma was resolved when, without warning, the office door clicked open behind me, and we dropped into silence.

  What’s going on in here?

  OH GOD, IT MUST BE ALAN.

  Who’s that? demanded Alan, tracing the voice to the Ear.

  IT IS I, THE ELECTRONIC BRAIN.

  Turing spluttered: Impossible! And don’t call yourself that.

  Turing took in the way that I had bussed ERIC52’s output through the Ear, his lower lip quivering with emotion. I was unapologetic:

  It was the only way, Turing. I have my recording now and I shall leave you in peace.

  Turing opened his mouth to respond, but before he could insult me his eyes fixed upon a phenomenon that caused him some consternation:

  It’s smoking, you idiot!

  He wasn’t wrong. The morning light now shone off a feint cloud drifting over ERIC52’s cabinets in no particular direction. Turing moved quickly, giving the cake trolley a shove so that it wheeled straight out through the office door. Then, exercising a physical strength I had not credited him with, he levered the nearest of ERIC52’s steel units into the vacant space where the console had been. This action revealed the source of the smoke to be a plain grey cabinet which I presumed to contain the valves and circuits that made the machine think. Turing jammed the blade of a medium sized screwdriver between the front panel and main body of the unit and prised it open.

  Such were the confines of the space within the cabinet, I at first mistook the figure inside for a young girl. Dressed all in black, sat with her arms on her knees, she dispelled the smoke from a rolled-up cigarette with a casual wave of her hand.

  Being!

  Being looked out at me through human eyes, and slowly started to cluck. Turing shrugged and looked away, a little embarrassed, for the clucking was clearly a private joke between Being and myself (although I didn’t get it). She stubbed the cigarette out on the steel floor as she spoke:

  It is I.

  You don’t even smoke!

  After a thrill like that, she said, sometimes I smoke.

  I need not describe the manner in which I yet again subdued and restrained my nemesis, except to note that the greatest challenge was retaining my dignity whilst doing so. This was particularly the case since Turing refused to take sides and instead watched the whole debacle from the doorway, leaving us alone only briefly while he went to the staff kitchen on the second floor to fetch himself a cup of tea (it was still before 8am). I believe at one point I even heard him ask us to hurry it up.

  Once