by Scott Sibary
They walked by the confluence of two streams distinctly colored by the sediments they carried. One was glacial and light blue, the other a muddy tan. One made a cheerful gurgling, the other a soft and welcoming rumble. Over a long stretch the two waters traveled side by side before mixing. AnDe shook his head and laughed.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing. I start to see symbolism in nature; it’s silly.” He shrugged and laughed again.
Staring at the same river confluence and its eventual single color, Solveig gave a visible shiver.
They walked on at a matched pace. An array of gems filled their view: individual trees burning yellow in the sunlight and patches of snow sparkling on mountains sides in an arc above, like Nature’s tiara. Just ahead lay a glassy pond. With the light footsteps of a storybook fairy, Solveig darted ahead to the edge of the pond, stooped, and looked down at the water.
AnDe walked up to her and saw in his reflection a face covered with curiosity. Her expression was more pensive, darkened like the bottom of the pond.
Solveig turned her head and looked up at him. “I got a false sense of déjà vu; but is was really just remembering a scene from a novel. The girl, Kristin Lavransdatter, is walking in a mountain meadow and sees her future—I guess you could call it that—in a pool along a stream.”
“What book is that?”
“That first book in the trilogy is called The, uhm, Wreath.”
“And what did you see?” he asked.
“A silly woman.”
He shot confused glances between her and the reflection of the two of them. Grinning, he said, “Perfect.”
Minutes later, a tidal wave of other tourists caught up with them. Jammed into a funnel of traffic crossing a bridge over a stream, they shuffled in step with the crowd. He could hear Solveig breathing hard, as though there weren’t enough oxygen for everyone in the thin mountain air.
“Time to head on out?” she said.
“Do you mean, now?”
She added, “We could get an early lunch first.”
He selected a pavilion at the edge of a lake. He spoke to the hostess, who led them to a table for two with an enchanting view over the water. The last of a thin fog hovered over one shaded edge of the calm surface.
AnDe suggested they spend the afternoon in the park, but Solveig preferred to escape the crowds, and arrive at Huahu while it was still light outside.
“Or,” he said, “we could take it easy this afternoon, coming back early in the morning for places we haven’t seen yet. I know it takes a day off our time in Huahu, but I think you’ll find that area much less impressive.”
“Maybe.” She held her teacup up to her face with both hands and inhaled the tea vapors. Facing the lake and its vanishing shroud, she said, “What if you go on your own for a couple hours? You could visit any special sights you want. I’ll wait happily in any uncrowded area, communing with Nature. The car should be safe where it is, shouldn’t it?”
“Yes.” He sighed, and then shook his head. “You’re right; we should keep to our plans.” He silently cursed to himself without looking at Solveig.
As they walked back to the car, he wondered why she couldn’t clear her mind of work, at least for a day. If she had wanted to work away from the health department, they could have found ample choices with beautiful settings in the greater Beijing area.
To be honest, he thought, it’s the mindset she falls into when she carries responsibilities. She becomes defensive—even combative. I must impress her with how much we have in common. I am still hopeful.
He put those thoughts behind him, but then found himself returning to plaguing recriminations. In one way it had worked out well, disclosing structural aspects of the Great Wall to Solveig. He’d revealed only those hidden aspects that didn’t belong there—not if it was the kind of immune system it was claimed to be. Therefore, he had acted honorably. And dishonorably, as he had betrayed implicit orders. He’d pretended himself to be a wiser judge than his superior. Focusing harder on the pavement, and on his behavior, AnDe kept scrutinizing his memory to assure himself that not just personal feelings, but some logic or intuition, had empowered him. And yes, there was a consistency to his thinking and a logic to what he’d done. And to what he would do.
Shortly after noon they were in the car and on their way to higher country. The road contained frequent straightaways and climbed steadily. Sitting across from AnDe, Solveig remained quiet as she focused her gaze on the terrain.
After half an hour and with a sleight of hand, she noticed AnDe flip the switch to deactivate the automatic guidance controls. An enduring suggestion of a smile grew on his brightening face. He seemed to breathe easily, his gaze fixed on the center line and his fingers playing along the edge of the steering wheel. The upcoming pavement had a severe dividing line down the middle, less clear shoulder markings, and a precipitous drop-off only occasionally visible to the driver. Hands at ten and two o’clock, he conducted them up the slope between lines he could have ignored if he’d deployed the autopilot.
Solveig sat taking in the rising landscape. The flat and vertical that had defined a year of urban living were gone from view. So were the numbing crowds. The vista of the massive mountains and scarily deep ravines changed with every bend and came alive with every bump in the road. It all seemed to be growing closer.
She recognized in the topography a panoramic metaphor for the past year of her life, with all its surprises. So different from the rapid turnarounds in a rugby game, where positions regrouped and tactics reformed according to predetermined strategies, and where the playing field itself never changed dimensions. Losing sense of where she was and who was on her side had forced a singeing lesson on her: those rigid categories of the game world were not be relied on in real life. And that should be a warning when designing the artificial.
The day AnDe gave her the key to unlock the gate to the Great Wall had turned into the day of her greatest fall. Her pursuit of self-esteem, camouflaged by a sense of responsibility, had led to its mirror image: a vicious circle of self-criticism. AnDe had advised her to disentangle those feelings, yet he too seemed a little different, a little less spontaneous, after the episode.
The breakthrough, the successful trial runs of her modified system, had propelled her like a conqueror riding along the top of the Great Wall. Yet, like the course of the real Wall, it was as up-and-down as a roller coaster ride. She realized she could have been duped. AnDe might have seen a stalemate. His disclosures might have been no peace-making gift but a modern Trojan Horse. By using his information to create a successful interface between the two systems, she might have revealed the structure of hers.
What looked like her system breaching the Wall might have been nothing but a stretching, a yielding, and eventually an engulfing by the life-like structure. As Mongolia had first conquered, but eventually been absorbed by China, the same could have happened with her system. Had she studied Chinese history only to miss its repeat? If she was wrong about AnDe and he had conned her, her little Troy had already fallen.
While in her rebellious teens, she’d been required to read the Iliad. She had identified with the original, tragic Cassandra: Princess of Troy and clairvoyant but cursed as an idiot. She, Solveig, had later abandoned the idea as pretentious and self-pitying. No one ever viewed her as an idiot; she kept her unnerving premonitions to herself. And she came to see her destiny as being in her own hands—not like Cassandra, fated to be violently abducted, repeatedly raped, and then bloodily murdered. Startling herself with the gruesome thought, her thighs flinched.
Or maybe this was one last attempt to break through her Protection Lock. That could have been his purpose in agreeing to a retreat. They’d never been out overnight together. Neither Reidar nor the embassy objected. But what do I know for sure, she wondered, as we disappear into remote mountains?
She glanced at him, noting his relaxed eyes, his mouth ever on the verge of a smile. Like a kid who’s
been allowed to drive the family car. Almost endearing.
What are you worried about?
You need his support, that’s what. You must get on the implementation team if you want to influence what might become the world’s first AGI.
Their car hit a bump in the road, and she saw another irony in AnDe. Chief designer of intelligent systems to interface with humans and help guide the world, he had readily eschewed the tried-and-true autopilot system and chosen to enjoy manual control of the car on that dangerous road. Solveig repositioned herself in her seat and checked her safety belt.
Contemplating the driver, she reeled him in. “Have you watched any old movies recently?”
He straightened up, and his voice was happy. “Why, yes, in the last month I’ve watched two oldies. In fact, my choices were inspired by you.”
“Really? And?”
“The first was Journey to the West. Do you know it?”
“I know something of the story. Chinese going to the West—meaning Nepal or India—to bring back Buddhist scriptures? I’ve never seen it or read the book.”
“I’ve also read the book—wonderfully fanciful. Like with the characters’ return journey to the East, you are bringing something promising from the West.”
“And which one of us is the Monkey? No, don’t answer that. And the other movie?”
“Persona, by Bergman. Not as amusing, but very interesting. I imagine you like his films?”
Solveig squirmed in her seat at the thought that she’d inspired him to watch that film: a story about an actress who loses grasp of her own identity and is suddenly unable to speak, and the unfortunate nurse who has to put up with the conceit. Either parallel was unappealing.
“Yes and no,” she said. “They’re artistically made, but they’re caught up with strong passions and issues that don’t intrigue me.”
“What! Don’t strong passions have appeal?” He kept staring at the road without a glance at her.
Her words rolled out. “Funny you can ask me that, after all this time. I get hit with them—you know that—but do they have appeal? They’re too controlling. Like drugs. I lose perspective, even direction. I prefer the gentler, steadier feelings one can work with and sustain. Don’t you?”
His expression suggested a flash of pain, maybe regret or recrimination. He kept facing the road unfolding before them.
“Well,” he said, “I have an idea. With all this technical, dispassionate kind of work we’re doing, it’s still because of passions that we’re here. At some point before our conception, passion must have filled our mother or father. Maybe passion is the requisite seed for action? Without it, most of the rest is moot, isn’t it?” His fingers drummed the wheel.
She chose not to answer.
“So we must fully understand our passions,” he said, “and how they help us to think. Not just us individually, but what we feel as a society, a species, collectively. That curiosity about us must be of central importance for the WEA. What do you think?” He turned and watched her reaction.
Solveig exhaled a barely audible, “I don’t know.” She leaned her elbow on the armrest of the door, stuck her thumbnail between her teeth, and bit on the idea.
Her eyes widened as the car headed onto the shoulder of an outside bend. “Watch out!”
He jerked the wheel, bringing the car into the middle of the road and then back into their lane.
“I think you just got passionate about your own idea.” She reached over to turn on the autopilot, then leaned back to watch both road and driver at the same time.
She thought, Yes, there’s no avoiding using something akin to a feeling, not a passion but something like it, as a seed for motivation.
The shadow of the mountains to the west had extended over the road by the time they parked outside their cabin. With walls of stone and roof of mudstone tiles, the structure measured scarcely more than four by five meters. It seemed to her like a dot on the landscape.
“It has electricity,” AnDe said, “but it gets so cold up here in winter that they put all of the plumbing in that little building over there.” He raised a weary-looking arm and indicated a structure about one hundred meters farther on. After several hours behind the wheel, his voice dragged like one’s feet at high elevations. “It has the bathrooms, a kitchen sink, and a shower. It’s shared by the six other cabins nearby. Our cabin isn’t fancy. I hope you won’t be disappointed.”
The cabins stood in green, expansive quiet. The short-clipped grass told of visits by herds of sheep and cattle, like those they had driven past in the valley below. A portion of the boardwalk at the Ruoergai Marsh and Flower Lake was visible, with the remainder hidden behind a ridge below and to the east of them. Near it, a two-lane highway ran the length of the flat valley.
Solveig cupped her hands over her ears and faced the open terrain. There came only a whispering of the breeze through the grass. The thin oxygen at 3,500 meters loosened her imagination. Behind the cabin rose peaks a few hundred meters higher. They gave the misimpression of smaller mountains, like the size of those in Norway. The lowering sun enhanced the autumnal colors in the meadow and cast an aura of a season ending.
“It’s exactly what I asked for: a rustic cabin in a mountain setting,” she said between deep, recharging breaths. “I saw photos online. The reality is even better. You did well.”
AnDe turned back to get the luggage.
As if caught in a whirlwind she sent herself spinning across the open meadow. Her arms outstretched, she made a half-turn with each leaping step and lifted her dance into near-flight. After half a minute she stopped spinning, stumbled, fell, and bounced back to her feet. AnDe was watching as she twirled back to the car, repeating her steps more slowly and managing to stay afoot. She stopped only a step away from him, gasping.
“No need to explain,” he said. “Now I feel it too.”
Stepping inside, they faced rustic architecture partly disfigured with modern décor: a wooden base cabinet with plastic countertop set against a rough stone wall, and a wooden table with metal and plastic chairs. Along another stone wall was a daybed. The one interior wall was of unpainted wood. Its door stood open, revealing a small bedroom containing one medium-sized platform bed.
“That room is for you. I’ll sleep on the daybed. Then I can protect you against any brigands who try to break in during the night.” She didn’t glance at him. “No, I’m just kidding; it’s actually really safe here, I’m told.”
But Solveig’s mind wasn’t hearing him, as she stood still, one raised hand loosely holding the strap of the bag she’d set on the table. Only her eyes moved as the contrast struck her for the first time. For lodging on a ski or hiking tour, it seemed adequate and natural. As she considered their purpose in going there, the critical and touchy issues they needed to resolve, she burst out laughing . . . and then fell silent.
A lot to face, she thought.
Realms of possibilities had collapsed down to four stone walls, hard against her vision. This reality refused denial or delay. It admitted only the two portals: one to the bedroom, the iconic resting place where dreams were conceived, lives often started, and often ended. The other door led to the outdoors and the beyond. The interior space contained a few objects, and two beings bringing life to the stage. The stage where their work would be completed, where they would have to choose.
“Simple and unaffected,” she said. “It suits our purpose perfectly.” She lifted her bag and stepped into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Alone for a moment, AnDe began arranging his bags and heating water for their evening meal. His undisclosed and uncertain plans, full of contingencies, rumbled in his mind like the bottom of the water kettle: metal over fire, heat turning into action. He must not let it boil out of control. Yet his path had led him to a chasm. His usual, methodical, step-by-step route might descend the gulf but fail to climb out again. His hopes could be lost down there in the obscure details of behavior, the rigid etiquette that
people design to ensure predictability, increase control, and feel secure. His routine approach could become mired in that tangle.
An eruption of sputtering steam and yellow flames brought his thoughts back to the cabin, and he switched off the burner.
Turning towards the closed bedroom door, the scene didn’t make complete sense to him. She was in there, in that small room, all of her. Not with him in a car, plane, dining room, or job site, acting as an unpredictable force or as something or someone to cope with, exciting and exhausting. She was there in that now precious little room in their small cabin, perched on the slopes of the giant plateau that was the home to his mother’s ancestors. Behind that simple wooden door was The Uncontainable—his uncontainable “Champion.” Undefeated, as far as he knew, by anyone but herself. And that tiny room and frail door pretended to enclose her. Would not the force of her being make the whole place suddenly explode, ejecting afar him and his stratagems for all their hubristic presumptions?
More puzzling was the answer. The door opened, and out stepped an ordinary human being in casual clothes and hiking shoes.
She asked, “Maybe we could look around outside before it gets too dark?”
Chapter Twenty
“There are rats up there,” her groaning voice complained. Her head still on her pillow, she listened to scratching, scurrying, and gnawing from the small attic above her room. There followed the piercing whimper of babies calling to their mother: cries that could penetrate one’s sleep. And, once penetrated, that sleep could give birth to dreams or nightmares.
Solveig followed the remnants of the trail left—the scenes in her dream—back to the associated memory of something that did happen. She saw herself sixteen again, in a cabin, crying.
“Come on!” the boy said as he stuck his thumbs inside her pants, grabbing them at the hips and pulling down.
They lay on the sofa bed; she’d declined going into the bedroom, having begun to feel woozy after only one bottle of beer. Neither of them had counted how many he’d drunk. She’d let this attractive friend from school start kissing her in the privacy of his family’s cabin in the mountains on Osterøy. Gentle pushback from her hands had softened to a caress that wrapped around his well-developed back. Just the two of them on a Saturday night escapade: one could feel protected by such mature strength.
