Conception: Book One of Human Dilemma

by Scott Sibary

  Through the window next to the door, she could see the entrance to the guard room.

  She explained further. “The operating system can know the Protection Lock is something performing its own unmonitored operations. The OS can know only what is stated on the outside: a lock for guarding access to the vital codes. Just like those outside this room assume we’re working in here but can’t know precisely what we’re doing.” She coughed. “Well, there’s the video monitor, but they can’t know precisely what we’re thinking. They have to trust that we’re trying to do our jobs. Likewise, the OS will have to approach the Protection Lock as a trusted system of unknown contents.” She looked at Wenbao Xin, the oldest of the Chinese members of her group.

  He stared back but said nothing.

  “Our system won’t let us say that,” Mishuang, the only other woman in the room, said. “It won’t accept us telling it not to investigate something.”

  “That seems strange,” Solveig said. “You trust in your superiors. If they tell you not to perform one of your routine duties, you don’t. Am I right?”

  “Yes, of course. But it is not like us.”

  “You mean it won’t accept your authority if you tell it to leave the Lock alone?”

  “We are designers and programmers. We must work within the limitations we are given. Our alternatives are limited.”

  And who, wondered Solveig, is responsible for this?

  “I apologize for confusion,” Wenbao Xin said. “Maybe if you allow immune system look into your Lock, just little at a time, eventually OS will accept it and merger can succeed.”

  “That’s the point I’m trying to make,” Solveig said. “The system needs to accept the Lock and the vital codes according to the characterizations I’ve attached to them, and it needs to run with that.”

  Wenbao Xin offered her a placid expression. “Security and immune system routines will not allow it to pass. Room 2 group is monitoring the actions of immune system. They do their best. They try to make adjustments. Nothing is working.”

  “So Reidar and Per have told me.”

  The two remaining Chinese engineers had sat silent as usual. In the past, both had proven reluctant to say anything that could come across as a challenge. She checked their expressions, trying to make hers seem encouraging.

  One engineer spoke up. “Even if the immune system allows your package to run, the vital codes would not become operational. Scenarios run by the group in Room 3 will not show obedience to your imperatives. Two of our colleagues spent years at Berkeley and MIT working on imperatives. Both men are highly competent and devoted. Still, the design is not working at all right now. I am sorry.”

  “And Rolv and Stig have told me all that. But you can’t crack a glass window pane and expect it to hold.” Her Chinese colleagues looked to be holding comfortably to their calm expressions.

  Lars held out an empty palm. “If we could figure out what information the immune system needs for it not to be bothered by the Protection Lock, then we might figure out if any aspects of the Lock could be revealed without jeopardizing its integrity.”

  The four Chinese remained silent.

  “Time for a break,” Solveig said. “Ten minutes?”

  She walked with Lars out to the large room. Three tables were empty; at the fourth sat two technicians drinking tea. She drew Lars aside near one of the walls.

  “Lars, you challenged me. You went directly against my point. Why?”

  “I expressed it conditionally, no promises. If it could work that way, wouldn’t you agree with me? If it can’t, it can’t.”

  “Why did you choose that moment? The sooner you offer a concession, the more likely it will become a commitment.”

  “This isn’t a concession; it’s a suggested condition.”

  “But why now?”

  “It shows we’re not secretive, that our way is not manipulative—or authoritarian.”

  “Consider my position. You made me look bad.”

  “What? Is this about you? About your feelings?”

  She spun around to face the wall, tapped her right toe several times, then spun back. “OK, OK.” She shook her head. “I’m tired today.”

  “Me too. I’m glad tomorrow is Saturday.”

  “Yeah.” She began shuffling out to the main hallway, and Lars followed her. “I’ve left the weekend open. I was supposed to have dinner with AnDe either tonight or tomorrow, but he left an hour ago. Said he wouldn’t be back ’til after lunch, if at all today. Our last lunch together was two weeks ago.”

  “Has the ‘sealed box’ issue come up between you and him?”

  “He’s not pressuring. Not yet.”

  As her Norwegian colleagues exited the health department building that afternoon and headed for the waiting van, Solveig lagged behind. She took several steps to cross the busy sidewalk before her feet scuffed to a stop. She put her hand over her stomach, but got little comfort from the action. Stalled between the jobsite and the waiting van, she felt no thrust from her legs, no lift, nothing. A strong-shouldered woman hurried across her view, pushing a boastingly pink baby carriage.

  Facing the noise and pollution from the street, Solveig braced herself as though she were about to plunge into cold ocean surf: a vast, overwhelming ocean, full of movement, into which an individual life could sink and disappear, or drift as a lost soul on open seas, far from safe harbor. She sought an excuse to make a last-minute suggestion of getting together with one of her colleagues; or Eva, Reidar’s wife; or Rolv’s wife and children. Any alternative to limbo.

  The door to the metallic-grey shuttle van stood open. Her group sat patiently inside, Reidar and Lars staring at her as if to ask what she was waiting for. They looked neatly and safely contained in the miniature world of their vehicle. But her mind drew back to see herself standing in the middle of pedestrian traffic, amid the noisy rush of a broad sidewalk along an eight-lane street, in the titanic capital of the largest nation on their little planet in an expanding universe, hoping Earth’s experiment in conscious life would not end as just another casualty on the outward path.

  She could tell herself she was part of that story. Though tiny and with limited abilities, maybe she was important for just one crucial moment in time. And she could tell herself that her next step was to climb into the vehicle waiting to take her safely to her den. Yet her unease wouldn’t get any better when she arrived there; the residential complex was nothing more than an eddy she would circle in before returning to the main current in her life.

  Under the clear and hazy sky, she saw herself caged on the open street. She stood wide-eyed, facing something too vast for her to see an escape. She beheld the seemingly unending expanse of a constructed world, filled with seas of faces—too many faces to take note of and imagine a life for, too many for one mind to do the necessary: to embody each with humanity. Her own thought-stream held her frozen.

  Back in Bergen, the incessant rain could be confining, yet she could still get out. Even in the dim light and wretched weather of February, when it might not stop raining for even a moment during the entire month, she could dress for rain and soon be at the edge of the city. Walking up the paved trail to Fløyen in light rain, she could glimpse enough from the faint images of buildings to comprehend the urban limits.

  Or, when the need was great, she could don foul-weather gear, hike up one of the higher mountains, and face the pounding from the world above. The trail would be muddy between the rocks and the brush alongside would fling back drops as she slogged through. Eventually, she’d stand on the mountainside, splattered dirt covering her boots, water finding its way in around her neck. When blasted by a hard rain and drenched to the skin, she would sense the message rising from inside herself. Beyond the neat and dry confines of walls, furniture, paper, and electronic screens is a different world: a universe that still allows urban life, the only kind that many know. Non-conscious itself, Nature has somehow created the only beings capable of making elaborate, conscio
us decisions. And by their choosing to live as if independent of Nature—the nature of which their own psyches are a part—they create crises. In reaction to the crises, demons form inside those natural human minds—and these demons could drive humanity into Armageddon and oblivion. Yes, she thought, it is worth a year’s imprisonment of my urban-wary spirit, struggling with my own demons, to engage this omnipresent enemy.

  She strode towards the van. Then she heard AnDe’s voice behind her.

  “Hey, Solveig!”

  With the timespan of a long, slow inhalation, she pivoted to face him. He continued.

  “I’m so sorry not to be in touch earlier. My schedule has been a mess recently. I didn’t know until just now if I’d be occupied with meetings this weekend.”

  She felt a surge of relief; the tinge of fear she ignored.

  “I’d like to invite you to dinner tomorrow night,” AnDe said, “at my favorite restaurant—one with a nice rustic feel to it. It’s the place I would have dragged you to that first evening you were here.”

  Knowing she was being watched by her five colleagues from inside the van, she felt her strength reappear. She straightened her posture. “Thank you. That would be nice. What time?”

  “How about if I pick you up at about five o’clock?”

  “Good. See you then.” She spun around and stepped into the van.

  Chapter Nine

  Saturday morning—late Friday night for him. She’d eaten breakfast and was in the kitchen getting a cup of tea when another message had came in from Erik. She told her phone to play it.

  “I know you’re extremely busy.” His pleading grated with unconcealed irritation. “Not calling me back makes that clear. You always cut everything else out of your mind when you focus. Things and people, like me, just disappear from existence.”

  Nonsense. Your comments say more about your neediness.

  “Maybe you don’t know what words to use, so you say nothing.”

  That’s part of it.

  “That’s why I need to come over.”

  No! It’s not all about your needs.

  “I’ve been trying to get a visa, but now, after several weeks, the Chinese seem to be denying me even a tourist visa! They don’t say what the problem is. I know you wouldn’t have asked them not to let me come.”

  I wouldn’t do that.

  “But I think if you ask your contact in the Foreign Ministry to say something to them—that you want me there or maybe just that my visit is no problem for you—they’ll get it all worked out, and I’ll get a visa.”

  It would be a huge problem for me!

  “We could be together. It’ll make all the difference. You’ll see.” He paused, as if waiting to hear her response.

  A hell of difference.

  “And, it’s really only fair to me. I’ve been patient . . .”

  “Delete message.”

  She returned to her desk and stood over the mess she used for her work: screens, trackpad, printer, and a flotilla of separate drives. To minimize vulnerability she had it all connected by a bad hairdo of wires. She leaned forward, hoping some intelligence would speak from the desk, offering an answer to any of her puzzles, professional or personal. Nothing happened, just dull static in her mind dulling her focus. She turned away and fetched her gym clothes.

  On her way out the door another call came in, this time from Reidar. She answered.

  “I received a call from my contact in Norway,” he said. “She told me that the Chinese Foreign Ministry postponed granting a visa to Erik Fortun. Apparently, they understand that you are, or were, in a romantic relationship with him. They want to know whether you want to see him. I gather they’d prefer you not spend time with him over here, but I think it’s your call. What do you say?”

  Like feet on black ice, the exclamation slipped out: “No!”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, I don’t want . . . I can’t have the distraction.”

  “Fine. I’ll let them know.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with him. I just . . .”

  “I understand. Don’t worry about it. You’re doing your duty.”

  Duty, she reflected. Plenty of it. And is that what’s behind this evening’s invitation? Of course. And it works both ways; why else would I have agreed to dinner?

  The hand-carved comb that Solveig passed through her hair was one of the few souvenirs she’d brought back from India. The inlaid colored glass sparkled like tiny diamonds and rubies, and the many fine fingers of the comb caressed her scalp with memories of her time in Bangalore. What a different experience that was.

  “Play a Bollywood theme,” she said to her music device.

  Catching the tune, she swayed her hips to a quarter speed of the beat.

  The comb slid through the waves in her long hair, pulling would-be curls into a uniform, trained obedience: individual expression smoothed into a voluptuous presentation.

  The comb caught on a tangle. Solveig worked around it, reducing the tangle to its core resistance, then pulled again. The comb slid though, along with a few removed strands. They were ready anyway, she told herself. She remained staring at the captured rebels in her hand before dropping them into the waste basket. Now I need to be.

  Her phone rang with a message from AnDe, saying he’d arrive about ten minutes early.

  That’s happened before, she thought, people too eager, and arriving early. AnDe mentioned the restaurant has a nice rustic . . . feel. So did that cabin. Well, you’re not sixteen anymore. You only let that happen once, don’t you?

  She considered the mascara that her hand had picked up out of habit, then put it back down.

  She exited the gate to the residential compound as the daylight was fading into a soft, hazy glow. A car pulled up and AnDe sprang out. After a few steps towards Solveig, he spun around to say something to the driver, completing his 360-degree turn as a nearly continuous motion.

  He waved as he walked towards her. His shirt and slacks were hardly more stylish than his usual work clothes. Only his tie, covered with little penguin caricatures, suggested a lighthearted occasion.

  His face shone with a momentary look of disbelief when he saw her in raised heels and a slim, aquamarine, raw-silk dress that accentuated her figure. She’d found as yet no occasion for evening wear and had been wondering why she’d brought the dress.

  “Ah ha! Surprised you, didn’t I?” she said.

  Their chauffeur took them past a park with large trees reminiscent of forested land. Solveig looked out the window with a longing gaze and began to tell AnDe about her home island. She paused her story as she noticed an expressway overpass cutting through the middle of the park.

  “It was a shame to build the overpass there,” AnDe said. “The official in charge of roads had more political sway than the one in charge of parks. Nobody around here wanted it there and it could have been built elsewhere, but there we have it! Good central planning should avoid poor decisions.”

  “It’s common everywhere I’ve been.” Her voice carried a bitterness that his had lacked. “Why can’t people foresee things better? It’s frustrating.”

  The automatic brakes engaged as a pedestrian crossed in the middle of the street, and she lurched forward. She sat back again, but her fingers tapped on the armrest a quick, chaotic beat.

  She asked, “Don’t you think most of our problems are caused by people, one way or another? Even when we genuinely work together, we create problems. As if life didn’t have enough challenges.”

  “Do you mean created deliberately, or instinctively, or as natural reactions to circumstances people face?” His voice rolled along, as if he were asking idle questions. “I’m not sure your concept of causation makes sense to me. I mean, if events happen within situations or settings, how is it that just one part is the source of what happens? You could label any plausible sequence of events in space-time, right? So why not say the whole situation, all the circumstances, cause the next set of circumstances? Wh
y not a flow of situations rather than individual, discreet events?”

  Her mind sped through to possible implications. If only one billiard ball is moving and strikes another, which then moves, couldn’t one say that the first caused the second to move? But he must understand all that. My example has meaning only within the context of an artificially prescribed period of time, and something must have caused the balls to be on the table to begin with, so the concept of causation itself becomes, in a sense, an attempt to separate out time, as if it were not one of the dimensions of the material world. And it’s analogous to the way—unknown to him—l keep the time factor undetermined for certain operations within my Protection Lock and . . . Oh, how much does he understand of my design? Is this a trap?

  Headlights from oncoming cars appeared as beams of light chasing one another. An excitement infused her, spreading from her head through her body and gathering like tingling electrons on the tips of her fingers and toes. It was that arousal of intellect she had experienced constantly in India, where studies melded with distractions into the mosaic of her continually developing mind. Yet now her insight stalled, as she tried to analyze the speaker himself as well as his ideas.

  “Pointing to the whole situation,” she said, “is a gracious way of not pointing fingers at individuals. So then, what’s your alternative? Don’t we each choose, within ourselves, using our separate minds?”

  “I don’t know. We often feel compelled, with no choice. I was trying to say that maybe I put too much blame on the people who put in the overpass. The systems in our society keep getting more complex and more difficult to comprehend. You know what I mean?” He gestured to her and chuckled.

  She sat poker-faced, thinking of how her Lock was designed to be incomprehensible from the outside.

  AnDe became serious again. “In the case of the overpass, there were city officials dealing with different agencies and trying to consider forecasts of demographics and economics and all that. Perhaps we shouldn’t always expect wise decisions?”