Lisa u into art?
Paul Who are you and what have you done to Lisa?
Lisa I’m serious
do u know about art?
Paul Which art?
Lisa art just art
do u think about it?
Paul I love films. Rock music.
Lisa good enough
Paul For what?
Lisa you know we got into that muddle with talos about art? I brought it up in the context of ethics that art is one of the reasons for why we value human lives above others and he challenged it right away
Paul It’s the same with feelings.
He doesn’t understand feelings either.
Lisa wrong
he said he understands them, but doesn’t feel them
and from the way he speaks about them I think he’s right
but about art I think he just doesn’t get it
he said that he suspects that art is arbitrary to
the point of not actually being a thing
Paul What’s your question?
Lisa he said an opera is indistinguishable from a bird
building a fancy nest
Paul Easy – that’s functional, art isn’t. Art for art’s sake.
You must have heard that.
Lisa yeah and I even told him that much
but he said that art is functional
it has a social function
we use it to signal
for mates, for status etc he had lots of examples
Paul Lots of people do art without ever showing it to anyone.
Lisa believe me I had counterarguments
but he always came back with something else anyway, I don’t want to replay that whole session bottom line is he gave me a challenge
Paul ?
Lisa come up with one explanation for why art is intrinsically valuable and separate from other animals’ endeavours that doesn’t boil down to ‘art is good because we like it’
Paul So, not a tautology.
Lisa I guess
that is the question
Paul Why now?
Lisa I don’t have much else to do until he’s back well?
Paul What?
Lisa the question
Paul I’m thinking.
Paul Listen to this.
You know how when he is communicating by voice sometimes the volume just fails and he starts sort of whispering?
Lisa yeah, actually, I did want to ask
why did u give him that plummy posh voice? it’s weird
Paul Hey.
That’s David Gilmour’s voice.
Pink Floyd. Vocal cord perfection.
Lisa christ
Paul Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say.
So, I thought there was a problem with the voice module and I kept trying to fix it.
Talos meanwhile kept insisting that his voice was fine.
But of course he kept slipping into whispering. And so I kept messing around with the program, until he finally confessed that he has been lowering his voice on purpose.
Lisa ?
Paul When he communicates with people, he wants to get a full visual, so as to collect info on micro-expressions and to assess truthfulness. If someone looks away from him, Talos will lower his voice to nudge the person to look at him – apparently we have that reflex, even if there is no human face to look at.
Lisa sneaky bastard
Paul Just letting you know.
Lisa speaking of sneaky bastards
henrik is prob having an affair
Paul Well, what do you expect?
You’ve been pining for me all these years.
Lisa ha
Paul Are you OK?
Lisa it doesn’t matter
when all is said and done
i’ll have done smtng for my kids’ future
he’ll have screwed his assistant
Lisa should things not go the way we’re hoping when talos is back
u can do that magic again right
bore them to death with hundreds of pages of code
give them some incomprehensible reason for why he’s not quite ready yet
Paul I can, yes, but what if they ask to see timestamped transcripts?
It will be obvious we lied.
Lisa the art question
Paul Go away.
Lisa funny, isn’t it?
Paul There is an answer.
But I don’t like it much.
Lisa shoot
Paul Art obviously brings us great enjoyment. And it is one of the main criteria when we judge the utility of people. History remembers artists as much, if not more, than it remembers political figures or scientists. Most people, if asked whom they would save in a fire between Leonardo da Vinci and fifty assorted economists, factory workers and peasants, would say da Vinci.
Lisa u r still saying what he is saying – that art is good because we like it
Paul Wait. We also believe there’s something universal about it.
Lisa but we can’t prove it
Paul No.
But our working assumption as humanity is that an alien would understand and appreciate our art.
ET would dig Beethoven.
Animals don’t.
I mean, not only do they not make art, they don’t appreciate it either. That’s different from the category of humans who don’t make art but can definitely appreciate it.
And we think this is the case because animals are less intelligent than us.
Someone with similar or higher intelligence would ‘get’ it.
Basically, we need to catch an alien and force-read him Shakespeare. See what he says.
Lisa u know what Talos will say, don’t u
Paul ‘I am that alien. And I don’t get it.’
Lisa why can’t he just reply to a message? a short thumbs-up
takes him one billionth of his energy
Paul I guess he knows we know he is OK.
So he thinks it’s pointless.
Lisa we don’t know he’s ok
we don’t know what he’s thinking
Paul You won’t know that from a thumbs-up either.
Lisa I’ve been wondering
do u have any idea what he might come up with? based on what he’s interested in, on his questions?
Paul It’s obvious, isn’t it?
Some aspect of climate change.
All his questions were pointing that way.
Lisa won’t be news then
unless he comes up with a solution along with it but remember
he also said that weird thing
about populations developing at different rates? ‘unstable progress divergence between clusters of individuals under conditions of perfect communication’
Paul I know. That’s what brought about his prediction of Islamist terrorism, no?
Divergence of secularism and wealth, and the internet to fuel envy and resentment.
Lisa yes
but
he seemed to think that’s not the end of it
but wouldn’t elaborate further
Paul What are you thinking? Class war? Populism?
We’re there already.
Lisa dunno
think he meant smtng else
Paul We have to remember he’s never disappointed us.
At every turn, he’s always done better than expected.
So there’s probably a good reason for this.
Lisa I don’t want to stress u
but boss did ask for transcripts
‘just to keep up with the progress’
Paul God. What did he say?
Lisa he was v pleased
Paul What?
Lisa.
You didn’t.
Lisa well
only a tiny bit of editing
so now I’m sharing them with u so u know what to say
should anyone ask
Paul The drones are: one still in Siberia, one in Botswana
in the middle of nowhere, and one in northern England.
Lisa the botsw one has been following an elephant herd for some days
Paul The little shit is going on a safari instead of working.
Lisa the last thing we have is he’ll be back after he’s collected enough data for analysis
Paul How much is ‘enough’?
Might be all the data till the sun goes out.
Paul Have you tried threats?
Lisa yes and I was presented with his theory about
threats
no kidding
he basically said we’ll never shut him down
Paul Did he back this up with anything?
Lisa that we never give up on technological progress
that humans always do everything they can do
Paul He thinks we are bluffing.
Lisa and his other argument was that if we shut him down he won’t know it
he doesn’t care
‘death is not an event in the experience of the dead entity’
Lisa thinking of trying bribery
at the last session, he asked me for a 4th flybot a submersible one
Paul Forget it.
That would cost what all the rest of him costs. Otherwise you can’t track it underwater, you can’t keep a meaningful connection with the cloud.
Lisa i had to give boss a date
i’ve postponed it so often i’ve run out of excuses talos will be back in a week, right?
he has to
Paul I can try to mess with his flybots remotely. I think I can
Lisa u’ve been sitting on this!!!
Paul Having him back is only half the story. We still need him to cooperate.
By the way, you know we cut his subscription to all science journals?
He didn’t even complain.
Lisa maybe he can get them elsewhere? find them online?
Paul He can’t, or nowhere near all of them.
And I can’t imagine he’d want to use all his computing power on hacking passwords, rather than just asking me for it.
Anyway, it made me wonder. So I checked his subscription status with some of them.
Turns out he hasn’t downloaded a single paper in more than three months.
Lisa there’s got to be some mistake
Paul There isn’t.
Lisa makes no sense
hang on
one of our advantages as humans over machines is that we can prioritise information. maybe that’s what he’s doing, focusing his efforts somewhere else
he’s stopped blindly amassing data and he’s prioritising instead
Paul Blindly amassing data, and only then analysing and prioritising is sort of what we built him for.
I have a monstrously bad feeling about all of this.
Lisa PAUL!!!
he just got back to me
said he’ll return the flybots tomorrow for minor
adjustments
so he knows he’ll have to talk
or I’ll take a sledgehammer to his little helpers
Part Two
1
Jessie wants to take the rudder, and Jessie takes the rudder.
‘You’ve been doing all the driving.’ Ash smiles at him, conciliatory. Then the boat’s nose lifts, and he has to hold on to the railing.
He closes his eyes, lets the spray cool his face. He remembers the pre-Eurostar days, the pubby smells of ferries.
They are on their way out of Folkestone harbour, on a dusty but prim little motor boat they found beached at low tide just off the marina. Once he agreed to leaving the cottage, it was as though they were always going to leave. The girls were matter-of-fact, decisive, and within hours they had sorted out provisions, packing, filled up the tank. There was a military flurry of activity around him that precluded any more debate or doubt. Before he knew it he was in the driver’s seat, kissing the green scratch card for luck, and they were heading east. Once in the car, it suddenly felt entirely plausible that they were driving away from this nightmare, outracing it. Why had he resisted leaving? France was a different country, and what had happened in England need not have happened on the other side of the Channel.
They had come unstuck, he recognises that now. The three of them were caught in some kind of witchy paralysis at the cottage, a torpor as dangerous as any disease.
We have three, four weeks tops before the first events, Ash had said, the girls having lost none of their certainty. Africa: they really mean it. But what do they know? Without news and telecoms, the world is huge and unknowable. No one can have any idea of what is going on elsewhere. Engineers might have found a solution at the last moment, too late to communicate it to the masses. The entire nuclear meltdown story might have been just a lie to begin with. He wouldn’t be surprised if the people they meet in France will be fretting over a completely different set of apocalyptic rumours.
‘How long does the crossing take?’ Ash shouts over the noise of the engine. She is rubbing sunscreen on to her arms. Before they abandoned the car she had changed into a jungle-green bikini top and shorts, and the effect on him was that for the first few moments he couldn’t see her properly, she had become a blur of coppery limbs.
His mouth is dry. He must be the world’s oldest teenager.
‘About one and a half hours,’ he says.
‘All the sunscreen in the world will expire in three years,’ Jessie announces.
An hour later, none of them is talking. There’s still no wind, but there’s a strong pull to the sea, and instead of coming closer they have watched the mass of land that’s France slide northwards. They are drifting south with the current.
‘You know what you’re doing?’ he asks Jessie.
She is hunched over the rudder, leaning on it with all her weight.
‘Happy to swap,’ she says.
‘Just keep us on course,’ is all he dares say.
He looks behind them, and sure enough, the UK coast has receded into the distance, while the French coast is pretty much where it was to begin with. It shouldn’t be possible, this going away without arriving. He worries about fuel: the boat had a nearly full tank according to the fuel gauge, but what does that mean in terms of miles at sea, in terms of time spent going against a current? If they lose sight of the UK coast, they’ll be out in the Atlantic. He avoids Ash’s glance, doesn’t want her to see his fear.
The waves are small, just a pulse under the taut skin of water. It’s not the waves.
This is like the epidemic, he thinks, the way it all appears fine – they’re on a boat, the sea is calm – until it suddenly isn’t. He feels panic rising in him, and he goes to stand by the rudder with Jessie. From the outset, they have been stupid: they spent so much time thinking about what they’ll find in Europe, and hardly any on worrying about actually getting there.
The water is dark blue, opaque with depth.
He wonders if it wouldn’t make sense to approach the coast at an angle, to use the currents instead of fighting them. Jessie disagrees.
‘I’m not letting go of the damn thing. It’ll spin, I can feel it.’
He fixes his eyes on the hopelessly distant coast. Every now and again he turns to see where they are relative to the UK.
‘If you don’t look at the shore for a few minutes,’ Ash says, ‘then you look, you’ll see we really are getting closer. It’s just very slow.’
Thank God, she’s right. They make it, somehow; over the course of an hour the French coast goes from being an indistinct mass to sprouting hills and buildings. He lets out a quiet ‘Yes,’ when they are within swimming distance. Jessie’s shoulders relax. She takes a hand off the rudder to rub her lower back. Two hundred feet from the shore Jessie and Iris II, at last, manage to hold a straight course.
‘Like an arrow,’ Jessie says, patting the rudder.
He sees the bodies then. Floating here and there in the water, these frazzled, almost shapeless lumps, trailing pale skeins of flesh that roll w
ith the swell. The sight fills him with horror, and he has to look away. He digs in a bag for the surgical masks, hands them out to the girls and fastens one over his nose and mouth. He pulls his feet up, out of reach of the puddle that sloshes at the bottom of the boat. He wipes his forehead clean of spray. He wants nothing to do with this water.
‘Didn’t see any on the UK side,’ Ash says.
‘Currents,’ he says.
He doesn’t know what happens next. He and Ash stand up, probably too soon, grabbing whatever piece of luggage is nearest. But Jessie, she likes to push her luck. She’ll push things as far as they will go, and now she has decided to just race the boat on to land to save them getting their feet wet.
‘Call me skipper,’ she says, but of course they hit something before they reach the shore, Ash loses her balance, fumbles for the railing, and the next thing is he’s watching his gym bag sink to the bottom.
Jessie stops the engine, comes and stands with him looking into the water.
‘What’s in that one?’ Jessie asks.
It’s not deep, but he won’t reach the bag without submerging his head.
‘Some clothes. My drawings, pencils, paper.’ The drawings of Ash that he shouldn’t have kept, but which is the only work he has left.
The sketching block was in a plastic bag. It might not be soaked yet, he thinks. The pencils will dry. He can’t just give up on them.
‘I can go in if you want,’ Ash says, half-hearted, looking at the human remains floating only a few feet away.
‘Forget it, no one is going in there,’ Jessie says. ‘We can try to fish it out, though.’
It should feel like a disaster, but it doesn’t.
‘Never mind, they’re spoilt,’ he lies.
The girls are glad to be let off the hook, and once the boat bumps against land the three of them start unloading. He carries the bags over to dry sand, all the while troubled by a peculiar sort of relief. He really has no choice now. Without either paints or pencils he’s free to go the way of accountants, he thinks, of the office workers who believe that but for cruel twists of fate they’d have been great artists.
They have made landfall on one of those in-between places on coasts that have a desolate air, a stretch of windswept, nearly empty land, with a cottage or a beach hut here and there like outposts of a frontier civilisation. A little way off, a discoloured estate agent’s sign encourages the staking of more claims. Pale sand dunes, some of them huge, dotted by tufts of tall, pale grass. Everything is whitewashed, light-washed, by the hot glare, and he finds himself squinting, even though the sun is behind them. The girls, too, have a blinded look about them.
Under the Blue Page 11
