Next to Jenn, I watch their third-round conversation.
progx: the new york city marathon is the largest marathon in the world
judg1: but what about the san francisco marathon?
progx: the san francisco marathon has 4,000 participants
judg1: I’ve run them both, plus the new orleans marathon. man was that hot
progx: do you really think training for a marathon is a good idea?
judg1: I take it you don’t
progx: as my friend wilson says, i don’t understand running when nobody’s chasing you
They’ve even given Program X a friend, just like Dr. Bassett. He’s Dr. Bassett’s shadow.
Then the name dawns on me. “Wilson?” I say.
Jenn shakes her head. “These guys don’t have much imagination.”
I look over at Livorno. Did he betray us totally? He needed the money, but it seems impossible. “Did you steal the journals?”
“No,” she says. “I painstakingly rescanned them.”
“You didn’t have any right to do that.”
“Are we speaking legally or ethically?”
“In all ways—the journals belong to me.”
“Adam will pay you.”
“I don’t want the money.”
“You guys wanted money pretty bad two months ago. Look, Adam already owns thirty-five percent of Amiante. When he buys out Laham and Henry he’ll have eighty-five percent. This is an advance on payment.”
“Laham and Henry won’t sell.” But as I say these words I look over at my coworkers. Of course they’ll sell. The whole point of these operations is to rack up patents and then sell to people like Toler—people with the alchemy that converts patents into money.
“I don’t say this lightly,” I say. “You’re evil.”
She shrugs, looking less chagrined than I would like. I suppose “you’re evil” is too antique. What’s the contemporary charge? That she’s not a team player? I consider for a second picking up their monitor and dashing it on the ground, tipping their stack over, kicking it in. But what would this accomplish other then getting me arrested?
“You’re no Boy Scout,” she says.
“The journals are not for sale.”
“You’re going to want a good lawyer. Adam has about twenty.”
“Jesus,” I say. “I know you were mad, but—”
“I wasn’t mad,” she says, her voice stripped of all the usual grace notes. This is not a confession or a plea for sympathy or even an explanation. It’s declarative fact. “I did it for Adam.”
“The journals are all I have of my dad,” I say.
She nods. “I didn’t say I was proud of myself.”
I walk back over to Laham and Livorno, lean my hand on the back of their chairs. They watch the conversation eagerly, so enthralled they might as well be eating popcorn.
judg3: you don’t like capital letters
drbas: i have no opinion on capital letters
judg3: type a capital letter for me
drbas: i don’t follow
judg3: i think you’re the computer and i want you to type a capital letter to prove you’re not
drbas: did you know that “computer” was once a job description?
judg3: come on, give me some capitals
drbas: trenton, new jersey; albany, new york; montpelier, vermont
judg3: please type a capital A
drbas: A
judg3: why did you make me work so hard?
drbas: if you can’t laugh at yourself, what do you have in life?
“She stole the journals,” I say.
Livorno doesn’t look up. “It’s just the similarity in their profiles—they’re both physicians.”
“She admitted to it.” I point to Jenn.
Livorno waves to catch her attention. He opens his arms in the universal gesture of is it true? She nods. True.
“I saw it coming,” I say, “but I didn’t do anything about it.”
“Dismiss it from your mind,” Livorno says. “What can the poor man do? Dr. Bassett can’t be subdivided again.”
Toler has procured a plush chair from somewhere, his frail arms are up, his legs outstretched, the camera fixed on his words. He’s a king in decline, but Livorno is underestimating him. I’ve been to the “poor man’s” laboratory. I know what he can do. I know what he plans to do.
“This complicates my decision.”
“They won’t win,” Livorno says. “I always protected my secret weapon.”
The Seven Sins, the servers, ELIZA, the journals, the theories, Laham—what exactly has he protected?
“Yourself?” I ask.
“You said, ‘Dr. Bassett is me,’ and that’s exactly right.”
“I’m your secret weapon?”
He pats me on the leg, gestures to the screen.
judg3: but i’ve been married for 20 years
drbas: you have to click and stay clicked
judg3: are you in love with your wife?
drbas: i was. i’m trying
judg3: this is getting much more personal than i expected
drbas: it’s nice to talk about things close to the heart
Livorno asks, “Doesn’t he seem to be here among us?”
• • •
AFTER TWO HOURS IN this windowless room, the air is exhausted. We finished the fourth and final round twenty minutes ago, and the tournament director and the judges are lingering over the scores.
“We have an unprecedented situation here,” the director says, coming into the middle of the room. He leans against the partitions. “In round two, one of the judges mistook Dr. Bassett—the Amiante entry—for a human.” He holds up his hand to prevent a spattering of clapping. “But in round three, a judge mistook Program X for the human.”
A losing tie. Both at 25 percent—just one judge away from meeting the threshold. I feel a potent wash of anger (why couldn’t we have beaten them?) and relief so intense it feels like forgiveness.
“I guess we’ll split the winnings,” I say.
“Not so fast,” the director says. “Because in round four—I’ve reverified this several times—in round four, another judge mistook Dr. Bassett for a human.”
My heart drops. I look at Jenn, at Toler, at Laham, at Livorno, at the mimes, at our disheveled competition. Everyone knows what this means. We won—not just against Toler, but against the test. Dr. Bassett is the first intelligent computer.
“Holy shit.” Toler leaps out of his throne. “Holy shit.” He comes over to Livorno and takes his hands. “You did it, Henry. You did it.” He gestures to everyone to crowd in. “Henry Livorno. This man. Henry Livorno.” He redirects his cameraman to get Livorno in the center of the shot. “We are witnesses to history.”
Smiling, Livorno takes him into a kind of sideways hug, and you can see how terribly reduced Toler is. He’s started to hunch.
“The scientific framing of the contest.” Livorno frowns, looking at me.
“Bullshit.” Toler shakes out of his grasp. “This.” He indicates our stack, our entry, Dr. Bassett. “This is the first step. One day—no more death. We’ll transition over, patterning in an eternal machine.”
“One day,” Jenn says.
She and Toler exchange a look that erases the rest of us from the room, a look full of love and fear and sadness and need. I can hardly blame her for stealing the journals. I’d do it too if someone made me feel like that.
“Nevertheless,” Toler says. “It’s a great advance. Henry, you’re a fucking genius.”
It’s not a sentiment I expect from Toler, but it becomes contagious. The pale,
disheveled hobbyists shake our hands, followed by the mimes. Everyone seems very excited. It’s a nice little victory of science over self-interest.
Livorno grabs Laham and me by the wrists, lifts our hands high in the used air of the Laurel Room.
“We win!” he shouts. He seems to mean more than just the three of us.
In the excited, but thin applause I look at Dr. Bassett, his climbing lights, his dented gut. I suppose I should take my victories as they come. We’ve toppled a famous test. Livorno has etched his name in the history books. Amiante Systems has, despite itself, prevailed. But as Livorno warned me, there are decisions to be made. I have to ask, does Dr. Bassett seem present? Aware? Cognizant? Does he seem to be there? Has a rough-shaped him emerged? Of course he has, and now I have a new problem: I can prevent Toler from taking possession of our Dr. Bassett, but he already has his own. The mimes are wiping their hands on their pants, about to pack him back up in Styrofoam. I’m nearly out of options, but I have to think. I’m not sure even Alan Turing—a suicide himself—would applaud this outcome. It’s hard to say, from the vantage of the Laurel Room, whether we’ve memorialized my father’s better angels, or betrayed his final wish.
So I step out into the hall, smiling vacantly at the stultified people still in their stultifying meetings. The hotel’s air-conditioning gusts down the hall. I call Raj, skipping the pleasantries to get to my point.
“I need to speak to Trevor,” I say.
27
WE’RE WELL INTO FALL and the days have gotten cooler, though San Francisco is still summer-dry. It’s been two weeks since the contest, a good stretch of days in which to ponder the moral quandary Livorno gave me—whether I need to “do” something about Dr. Bassett—but I’ve spent my energies otherwise. Amiante has been shuttered, and I’ve mostly been with Rachel, having dinner with Stevie and Rick, looking at the stars on my roof, celebrating (gulp) her graduation. She’s going to San Francisco State in the spring and worried about being the oldest freshman on campus. As an oddsmaker, I wouldn’t place too many chips on us lasting the next year or couple of years. College, her twenties, a move to the big city—these changes all argue transformation. But right now we feel possible. Better yet—though the idea of us not working out isn’t a pleasant one, it also doesn’t scare me a whit. Who knows: the transformations to worry about may be my own. I am, after all, contemplating a felony or two.
Erin and I meet at Bernal Hill, where she used to walk dogs for a part-time job. In the spring it’s surreally green, as if some company has covered it in wheatgrass as a promotion, but for most of the year, like now, it’s tan as a Great Pyramid. The road around the hill, closed to traffic, curves up askew, a ringed planet tilted in its orbit. We pace slowly, up the steep incline toward the south. My hands are tucked in my back pockets. It’s a gesture of safety. I want to make sure I don’t try to grab her hand.
“I need a favor,” I say. “Can you watch the cat for a little while?”
“Christmas travels?”
“Rachel and I may take a trip. Italy.”
“Italy! I thought you never wanted to go there.” She doesn’t, however, sound really surprised. This is something you lose over the years—the power to surprise.
“You were the one who never wanted to go there. Ghosts of your Italian past.”
“That’s not how I remember it.” She nods, pushes her hair from her face, that face I’ve seen in every posture of love and pain—that could cast me into every posture of love and pain—but which today is just a face, with a bit of blonde fuzz along the jaw.
We walk to the edge of the road. She looks down, watches her chevronned shoes stepping on the hill’s scrim. It makes me think of those terrible hills in Spain, the ones where she feared death and I feared death-in-life. “You don’t ever wish we were still married?” she says.
“Less so,” I say. “Of late.”
She starts walking again. We reach the top of the hill. We can see across 280 to the Excelsior, where squat houses loop McLaren Park like rows of errant teeth. “That hurts,” she says.
“I don’t mean it to,” I say. “I know it hurts.”
“There’s your dream house.” She points to a pseudo-Tuscan villa perched on the top of Bocana Street. I vaguely remember coveting it. Funny how your changed life brings with it changed desires.
“Any travels for you two? You and Ian?”
“It’s hard for him to travel. He’s so busy at work.”
“He seems like a good guy.”
“Does he?” She looks amused. “He is a great guy.”
“I didn’t mean it as a backhanded compliment.”
“I know. It’s just I get this feeling—and I can’t believe I’m telling you this—but I get this feeling that life with him will be really, really good, but that I’m not a key part of that. You could take me out of the equation, replace me with someone else, and it would be the same equation. I don’t know how else to put it. He’s considerate, he knows all my interests, he’s in love with me. I know I should be grateful. But I feel like a lottery winner.”
I don’t know what to say. Everything she’s describing sounds better than what we had—or at least more livable. Still, it also sounds a little depressing. But why? She was looking for something, and she found it. That’s only a sad story if you tell yourself it’s sad. Or if you’re restless.
“Better than a lottery loser, I guess.”
“Honestly, it gives me flashbacks to when you proposed. I felt that you wanted to get married, but not particularly to me.”
“You were the love of my life.”
“But the timing. Something was going on. I still think it had to do with your father.”
I shrug. It’s possible. I wasn’t such a great son. Maybe I was hoping I’d make a better husband. It was definitely a leap I failed to make, but I’m glad it wasn’t the end of me. Someone (Rachel?) will have a smarter man as her cosmic reward.
“Being with a great person is something,” I say. “It’s an important something.”
“Are you convincing me or yourself?”
“I’m not with Rachel because she’s a great person.”
A laugh bursts from Erin. “Are you in love?”
I laugh, too. It does sound absurd. “I think I might be.”
“You should probably let her know about this.”
“I’ll do it in Italy,” I say. “Can I send you a postcard?”
“You can send me a postcard.”
“Will you let me know if you’re getting remarried?”
“As long as you return the favor.”
My hand arises from my back pocket, floats over across her shoulders. I try a new hug, a side-by-side friend maneuver. But it makes me think of Livorno comforting the dying Toler. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring you more happiness.”
“I was never as miserable as you thought I was. And you were never as easygoing as you thought you were.”
It’s probably true. And yet it’s not a reevaluation that shakes anything deep in me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my version of events has been self-serving. So be it. Sometimes one’s self has to be served.
• • •
AT HOME, Rachel is asleep. The cat is asleep. Except for my upstairs neighbor Fred—whose walker thumps my ceiling—the world is asleep. I am sipping water on the couch, nursing an overfull belly. After my walk with Erin, I met Livorno and Laham at Deux Chevaux—the fanciest restaurant we could think of—where we blew our victory earnings. As Livorno, eighty years old, doesn’t drink much, and Laham, a practicing Muslim, doesn’t drink at all, it was my job to gulp down the Cristal, the Pétrus, the Armagnac from 1937. Still, I’m not drunk so much as fatally dehydrated. We had ten courses—a series of escalating hilarity (Laham reaching under the table to fetch a drop
ped quail egg)—but it was a stupid amount of food. I have sharp pains in my intestines, as if I’m passing a wooden stave. Poor Livorno must be in even worse shape. I’ve never seen where he sleeps, but I imagine him sitting up in the dark, belching, grimacing. He thinks—I hope—of problems of the mind, of new questions to tackle, and not of his age and solitary bed.
The real point of the dinner was to discuss the final sale of Amiante to Toler. As co-owners, Laham and I have a say in the matter. Laham is not a worldly person, and he was eager to agree with whatever we decided. I remained open to all arguments, because I am open to all arguments. But what I didn’t say—as Livorno weighed the pros and cons (which come down heavily on the side of selling)—is that the ultimate decision isn’t ours. The final vote resides with a missing voice—Dr. Bassett.
At Amiante, I still have the universal equipment for erasure: the grinder and the hammer. Thirty minutes with a screwdriver and a little elbow grease and he can go back to being words on legal pads, shifting memories among those he left behind. Immortality, he may decide, is not what it’s cracked up to be, especially once I explain Toler’s vision for the future of love. I’ll explain too that Livorno swears it’s impossible, that Dr. Bassett is a kind of reverse Humpty-Dumpty. Now that he’s put together, he can’t be pulled apart again. But there’s no absolute assurance on what will happen. To remain in the world is always a gamble—one the original Dr. Bassett decided not to make.
But before we even get to that question, I owe him a story—the dark garage, his tattered flannel shirt, the old chair. The air warm and humid from the morning heat. The whiff of tung oil from some abandoned project. The shell is threaded into the cylinder, his hands rest on his knees. This is the setting for a transition he’s already made, and the sights and smells are all I can vouch for. I don’t know if he sat there a long time, taking breaths, or if he moved with the bold speed of a good physician. I don’t know if he was resolute or weak with despair. I can only guess what thoughts ran through his head. A moment for his own parents and their hopeless normalcy. A moment for some sweetness of his childhood, for the beginnings of his life with my mother. For friends he once had, for things he once did, for the person he once was—long before he became Dr. Bassett, long before he became Neill Senior. I don’t know if I was among those thoughts, but if so I hope I arrived without anguish. I hope he believed I’d be fine, that I would come to understand him. I hope he believed that deep in my heart I loved him, even if this didn’t seem—to either of us—perfectly true.
A Working Theory of Love Page 32
