by Andrew Pyper
“Do you foresee any applications for your system outside that of a personal guide?”
“We’re always working on things. There’s been calls. The Pentagon has seen some potential for military deployments. Certain governments have shown interest in its use in policy development. NGOs, religious leadership, corporate management. Anywhere a decision has to be made, Hypothesys can be there.”
“How are sales going?”
“This trip alone has been very fruitful,” Wallace says, lowering his eyes in a half-second show of modesty. “Barry and Lydia, our associates on the money side of things, just yesterday sold world Portuguese rights for, well, what can I say? A significant amount.”
“We hear four million.”
“You hear pretty good.”
“What about the movie?”
“What’s with you guys and the movies? It’s like you’d all rather be working for Variety or something.”
“Hey, we’re all in it for the glamour, right? So what’s the deal?”
“The deal is that as of two weeks ago the film rights to our joint autobiography have been optioned by Paramount. I understand that a screenplay is already under development.”
“Who are they thinking of to play you and Mr. Bates?”
“Naturally, I think the twenty-million-per-movie pretty boy of the moment would have to play me. I guess we’d need two of those, now that I think of it,” he says, offering an apologetic pout over at Bates. “One concept the studio people have mentioned is an updated version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I’m rolling with that. What do you guys think?”
“Would you be the beauty or the beast?”
“Very funny, Diane.”
“Has the autobiography even been published yet?”
“Hey, we’re still living our lives here. We haven’t had a chance to write about them yet.”
“This one is for Mr. Bates. Ever get tired of playing second fiddle to your exuberant partner here?”
The young man behind the computer looks out at us directly for the first time. His face elongated and blanched clean of expression, as though someone has accused him of something terrible. But this is more or less the way he always looks.
“There is no second fiddle with Hypothesys,” he says evenly, though his knees are now thudding up against the underside of his desk. “In our partnership, we both play first violin.”
“Very well put, Bates,” Wallace cuts in and gives Bates an unnoticeable signal that turns his head back to his computer screen. “OK, everybody. Last question.”
“What is your opinion with regard to the possibility of your team being the first to one day develop authentic artificial intelligence in computers?”
“I think that day is already here, Brad.” Wallace blinks earnestly. “If our program can advise you as to how to live your life, and that advice is no worse than what most other people would likely advise, isn’t that a demonstration of intelligence? Assume for a moment that wisdom is adhering to the law of averages—and who’s to say it ultimately isn’t? I mean, that’s what rationality is—then what we have here is the old wise man sitting on top of the silicon mountain, my friends.”
With this Wallace smacks a fist into his palm and Bates punches at his computer one last time. The synthesizer music returns, a single, thrumming bass note like a far-off freight train. As Wallace steps back from the lectern mouthing Thank you and pointing directly at recognized faces in the audience like a presidential candidate, the sound enlarges. The screen at the back of the stage becomes a slow strobe of colors that freezes the room in half seconds of blue and yellow and underwater green. And as the sound fully enters our chests (noticing only now that we have been painfully applauding since the first thank you) Bates rises from his clear plastic table and joins Wallace at the front of the stage.
They bring themselves toward each other with their smiles, arms rising to curl around the other’s waist. These pictures of them stay in our minds longer than any of the catchphrases or special effects that preceded. It’s somehow clear that this is the only part of the presentation that wasn’t planned out. A gesture too fluid to be rehearsed, too familiar, without the stiff hesitations of thought. Two young men caught in the lingering wash of adult applause, standing so close they could be joined at some hidden point, tied to one another by a transparent wire that allows a range of individual movement but can also reel them back together at any time. They could be brothers. Or fashion models beaming their good luck out from a page of gloss. Or street hustlers starting their shifts.
I stand at the back of the room and hold them there for as long as I can. We all do. A last look at how things are, before they turn into whatever comes next.
from
THE TRADE MISSION
BY ANDREW PYPER
Acknowledgments
For providing the time and space to write, I am indebted to the Yukon Arts Council, Belinda Smith, Max Fraser, and most particularly Pierre Berton for my residency at Berton House, Dawson City. For my year as writer-in-residence, my thanks to Champlain College at Trent University, its students, and its Masters during my stay, Martin Boyne and Stephen Brown.
The Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts are enthusiastically thanked for grants provided during the writing of this book.
Portions of the novel have been previously published in different form in Carousel and The New Quarterly. I am grateful to the editors there, namely Mary Merikle, Peter Hinchcliffe and Kim Jernigan at The New Quarterly and Daniel Evans at Carousel for their supportive comments.
I am very much in debt to readers of earlier drafts: Andrew Hilton, Jennifer Warren, John Metcalf, Sean Kane, and first and last, Leah McLaren. Also, to the editorial intelligence of my agent, Anne McDermid, who provided helpful focus along the way.
For the editors who have worked on this book, much thanks to Jacob Hoye, Mari Evans, and particularly to Iris Tupholme and Karen Hanson here at home.
And finally to Leah McLaren, for a whole lot of patience and various life-saving moments.
Toronto
February 1999
About the Author
ANDREW PYPER is the author of Kiss Me, a collection of short stories, and The Trade Mission, his newest novel. Lost Girls (winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel and a New York Times and Globe and Mail Notable Book) has been published in the US, the UK and has been translated into several languages. Andrew Pyper lives in Toronto.
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EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40104-3
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