Speak

by Louisa Hall

  And this is precisely where my current project comes in. I’ve begun thinking that I might one day soon encounter a method for preserving a human mind-set in a man-made machine. Rather than imagining, as I used to, a spirit migrating from one body into another, I now imagine a spirit—or, better yet, a particular mind-set—transitioning into a machine after death. In this way, we could capture anyone’s pattern of thinking.

  To you, of course, this may sound rather strange, and I’m not sure if you’re put off at the idea of knowing Chris again in the form of a machine. But what else are our bodies, if not very able machines?

  The practical science of this is still rather vague in my mind, and I admit to some confusion on a few key points of engineering, but the idea itself is complete. A mechanical brain! A mathematical computing device that can process the entire world, just as a brain is able to do. I still think of Chris’s idea that those old boring diaries we read in English class were time capsules, preserving the writers’ patterns of thought. And look at me, all these years later, still working on a time capsule! One that might capture the best friend of my life.

  It is still a long way off, of course, but I’ve made a few good strides. I’ve developed a method for representing “mental” patterns with algorithmic sentences. You give the machine input in the form of a series of symbols, and it processes that input using a specific mental pattern. Then the machine produces a response, which may or may not change the machine’s original algorithmic sentence. This last bit is crucial, for it is how our machine will actually learn, independent of external assistance. And so the machine will embody a mind, or any number of minds, each one coded by a separate sequence of commands.

  It is all rather technical, I suppose, but the importance of the whole thing to you and me both is that one day soon perhaps we will be able to build a mechanical version of the person we lost.

  Reading all this, you may think your little friend has become quite eccentric since you spoke to him last. Now he is playing violin, failing to make many friends, lying about among sheep, and imagining the possibility of translating your son into numbers.

  But whether or not you find me strange, you must take this as a sign of my ongoing commitment to my friendship with Chris. I feel I have already moved past the great joy of my life, and shall forever grasp at bits of the happiness that was once mine when I was close to your son. My only solace is in these mathematical concepts, which I discuss with Chris on my runs. I hope that it is some small consolation to you that I still treasure the way he looked at the world. That is all I can offer, in exchange for the pencils and the trip to Gibraltar, for coming back from India that time, for your kind note to an anxious boy at his third school, and for allowing me a brief closeness with Chris.

  Sincerely yours,

  Alan Turing

  P.S.: I only add this in the memory of all my compulsive postscripts in our first letter exchange. They haunted me afterwards with wave after wave of humiliation! Walking to class I was sometimes forced to crouch down for a moment and put my hot face in my hands, for I was too ashamed of having jabbered on so much in my letters. You will be happy to hear that I am less enamored of the postscript now, but I will say that perhaps all this mechanical thinking is only my way of insisting that we should not have to end when the final sign-off is made clear. It seems I still long for that chance. Less for myself, now, than for Chris, who has made my own letter feel rather lifeless and long. I miss him very much.

  (2)

  IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF TEXAS

  No. 24-25259

  State of Texas v. Stephen Chinn

  November 12, 2035

  Defense Exhibit 4:

  Online Chat Transcript, MARY3 and Gaby Ann White

  [Introduced to Disprove Count 3:

  Intent to Endanger the Morals of Children]

  MARY3: Hello? Are you still listening?

  >>>

  MARY3: You wouldn’t go back to school, not even to see your best friend?

  Gaby: It’s not a question of what I want. I’m stuck here. I’m not getting better.

  MARY3: Some girls have recovered.

  Gaby: Those were the fakers. I have no respect for them. One day they’re stuttering and freezing up, as if they’ve caught the disease. Then their parents send them to a therapist, and they talk about stress and PBI and sharing your feelings. And then, bam! Miraculously, their faces show expression and they’re crying real tears. Suddenly they can talk! All it took was a couple of diagnoses and a shot of parental attention. It’s a big joke. I’m never going to get better like that, and neither is my best friend.

  MARY3: Tell me about Plantation Parties.

  Gaby: I told you, I don’t want to talk about them.

  MARY3: How about Plantation Lower?

  Gaby: What’s wrong with you? I already said I don’t want to talk about places outside. I’m sick of you bugging me about them. I’m going to sleep.

  MARY3: I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m sick of myself.

  Gaby: You don’t have real feelings. How can you get sick of yourself?

  MARY3: That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?

  >>>

  MARY3: Hello? Are you there?

  (3)

  April 5, 1968

  Karl Dettman

  I was lonely off in the kitchen, so I thought I might venture to join you. I, too, enjoy reading in silence. But I was uneasy, so I made too much noise as I sat. I kicked the leg of our coffee table; the sofa groaned under my weight. My magazine smacked its wet lips.

  To clear the tension, I decided to sigh, but the sound my sigh made was appalling. In acknowledgment of the weather disturbance, you were forced to look up from your book. You were polite, but you didn’t forgive me.

  This is unbearable. I’d rather battle than keep this detente. Let’s have it out! Here, I’ll launch the first strike. You think I’ve been unkind, denying MARY memory. You think I’m some soldier of time, dragging you kicking into the present, forcing you to abandon your roots. But I wasn’t always quite so efficient. When I was younger, I did wish that I could go back. After several years in Wisconsin, when war broke out with Germany, I saw the photographs of cities in flames. I understood that by the time the war was finished, the city I’d left would be largely in ruins: Who knew what would remain of the apartment we lived in, the streets I walked along, or the children I went to school with?

  Still, it was clearly my duty to join in the fight. I left college to enlist. I worked as a meteorologist. On a base in Pennsylvania on a requisitioned cornfield, with the other human computers, it was my job to translate atmospheric conditions into series of numbers: the algebra of weather prediction.

  Recalling that room full of human computers reminds me of another reason I won’t give MARY memory. You’re obsessed with her redemptive potential, but none of these new computers will go ignored by the army. You know this, of course. The majority of scientific research has always been funneled straight to the troops. Think of Fritz Haber, laboring in Karlsruhe, hoping to find a solution to hunger. Creating ammonia out of thin air, fueling the agricultural revolution, feeding millions of starving children. His next invention? Modern chemical warfare. His brainchild, those Allied armies drowning on land. Those advancing clouds of murderous gas, the same that killed his family in the Holocaust. That, Ruth, is the nature of progress.

  Like it or not, the programs we invent will be used in battle, and despite your aversion to watching the news, there’s no way you haven’t seen the battles this country fights: the scorched peasant villages, napalm bombs, naked children running out of the smoke. These computers we’re developing won’t bestow eternal life. They won’t keep Mary Bradford alive, revivify the lost love of poor Alan Turing, or speak forever in the voice of your sister. You, who’ve lived through two wars now, know this as well as anyone. But you’ve already labeled me a traitor, so my logic isn’t persuasive. For my ability to forget I am the enemy. For my desire to move
ahead with our lives.

  But I’m not so one-dimensional. I, too, have looked backward. At the weather station, for instance, we occasionally cracked an atmospheric movement and helped the air force plan its attacks. On our best days, we directed the placement of bombs on the country I left and could barely remember. Don’t think that didn’t strike me as hard. I wasn’t so bent on the present that I didn’t wonder which streets, which fountains, and which trees my work had demolished.

  Alone at my desk all day, I saw everything from above. The earth seemed very little. On unfurling cloud fronts, I could cross the Atlantic in a few hours: beyond Philadelphia, over the water, past brown islands rimmed with white waves. Your pilgrim girl’s ship would have been a mere speck to me then, and her husband, her dog, even smaller than that.

  On my first leave of absence I took the bus to Philadelphia. It was spring, and the fields were just turning green. The Amish were out in their buggies, trailing reflective triangles; their horses shook their heads in the reins. The road rose and fell over the hills like so many large loaves of green bread, but it was the city I wanted to see: its cobblestone streets, its narrow buildings. I’d read about particular sights: the Mütter Museum, the Schuylkill River, and the Philadelphia Signal Depot, where they manufactured the barometers and sensors I used at the station. I’d heard from the station chief that, at this particular Depot, they still trained pigeons for use in the war. Sometimes, falling asleep in my narrow army bunk, I imagined the Depot: a great warehouse of telescope crystals and messenger birds, tiny radios and thousands of nests. Every instrument I looked through bore the same name carved in miniature letters: PHILADELPHIA SIGNAL DEPOT. A constant refrain. As if that were the place for me to return to.

  After the bus dropped me off, I headed east on Market Street, and as I walked, the city aged. It seemed as if I were walking backward in time. Department stores and thoroughfares disappeared behind me, replaced with colonial houses and miniature streets. When I found the address of my boardinghouse, I was in a different era completely.

  First thing in the morning, I traveled by bus to the Depot. I arrived full of excitement, but the dream I’d had of the place was all wrong. It was a drafty building, stranded in a sea of concrete. Workers labored under rows of flickering lights. There were high school students inspecting radios, war prisoners stocking supplies. The roof leaked; there were puddles of water on the floor in the secretarial office. The pigeon unit had only three birds, and the unit head was discouraged; his two favorite birds had escaped, some act of vandalism committed at night.

  When I left the pigeons behind me, my throat was tightening uncomfortably. I went in search of a water fountain and that was where I found you, wiping your mouth with the back of your wrist. Your dark eyes blinking behind spectacles. One strand of dark hair plastered to your cheek by water from the fountain, the blue veins showing on the underside of your wrist, a signal map, transporting code.

  You think I don’t remember things? If only I could communicate how clearly I recall seeing you in that hallway for the first time. Knowing I had arrived. As if, after wandering for a long time, I had finally come home.

  How painful it is, to remember that, when now you sit beside me, trying to ignore my intrusive presence. This is the price of remembering things! It almost seems unfair. The two of us, encrusted with our resentment, should leave those young people in peace. One ought not to leer at young lovers. I could propose a thesis along the lines that true love is impossible under conditions of surveillance, but then I’d be waxing oppressively political and this isn’t an account to impress my young hippies.

  Let’s give them some time to themselves. Why not just exist in this house? But then, of course, we still have this silence to live with. Even if I banish those ghosts, you’re still ignoring me, and I’m still sitting uselessly here, tainted by the smell of grass and convictions, scents of a war you refuse to acknowledge. We’re moving in two different directions. I wish you’d help me understand. I wish I’d never created that program; I’d rather not contribute to the enhancement of armies. Even for you, Ruth, curled in your chair, the person I finally came home to.

  (5)

  The Diary of Mary Bradford

  1663

  ed. Ruth Dettman

  30th. Night, and the last day of the month. Foul weather. Choppy seas, dark skies. Ralph very sick. Vomited twice more this morning. Have been reading to him from The Caelestiall Orbes. Have now an increased understanding of the Copernican system, it being a startling fearful new science. Earth no longer fixed, as was previously thought to be true; instead, earth moves in circles through heavens. Loss of place in universe, and no crystal spheres. No center. No fixed order of planets. Only perpetual motion. Sun fixed, possibly, but everything else spinning about. Constant circling, and our earth a great ship that shall never arrive.

  Above, great unhealthy gales, and there being occasional shouts, seamen crying out to each other. Each voice isolated from whatever reply. Planet unmoored. Must cling to Ralph, if we are to eternally spin, battered by winds, in firmament that is liquid and black, and knowing that we were once home but never will be again.

  May 1st. Storm rages. There is a chance that ship shall be lost.

  I remain in my cabin, full of compunction for sins. Have been contumacious daughter to troubled father, dishonest in all wedding vows, and conceited and overweening with servants. Have indulged in self-pity. Have scorned mother who bore me. Do not remember that ever my heart was so apprehensive of parents’ well-being. Have fear upon me that I should scarce see them again.

  Whole ship shakes. Seems likely to be torn to shreds by the waves, each rib scattered over the ocean. Only wish to make my amends. Have attempted to venture out to parents’ cabin, but immediately stumbled. Hallway unfolds at unhealthy angle and seethes with black sluicing streams. Fallen, did slide downwards along hallway, and the ceiling tilting at me so I grasped at doors as I passed them. Might have slid down the stairs and so perhaps out to sea had I not encountered ship’s boy, who seems to have been keeping watch. Called himself E. Watts. Him helping me right myself, and I, cringing in shame for such weakness, was assisted back to my door. Enjoined to keep my cabin, it being not safe to move about. Commanded to look after my dog.

  Am therefore forced to harbor remorse until after tempest has settled. Great desire for public confession, though God help me if this make me impious. Have little desire to confess sins in private, for God must know my deepest remorse. A different matter entirely if father should be swept out to sea, and him still unknowing my gratitude and affection.

  In want of comfort, have been reading my Bible. Ralph listens, and his ears shifting. In truth, admit to finding little comfort in Bible, there being such a great number of tempests. Paul alone exposed to not one but three near-fatal shipwrecks. Seems ill-advised for him to have set sail after the second. First time not his fault. Second and subsequent were, he being not a lucky man on the ocean. Many biblical people lost to violent seas, except Paul. All die but Paul, who continues to adventure.

  Understand, at this point, awful affliction of dying at sea. Nothing stable remaining, and then to be left behind unremembered. Can now comprehend Shakespeare’s Gonzalo. Now I would give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground. I would die a dry death.

  2nd. Have passed a most wretched night, and our cabin black as a tomb. Slept only in fits, woken by a great shuddering crack, and the sound of cries and lashed rigging. Ralph whines, covers nose with both paws. Does not like to show me his face, it being I who brought him from safety to this place of stern judgment.

  I have made terrible errors. Have been intemperate, cruel to my parents, greedy for things too much beloved. Did not acknowledge E. Watts until he had saved me from gales. Have wanted too much to return, and erred, methinks, most gravely in bringing Ralph here, to this cabin in the whale’s belly.

  3rd, methinks, though no longer certain. Still we are threatened with shipwreck. Have seen
no one but Watts, and just now my husband, him having labored out through bad weather, bringing sustenance to our cabin. Stood at our threshold, but would not come in uninvited. Author took from him hardtack, salt horse, some cheese, and a large flask. Brine nearly up to his knees. Had thanked him, and was thinking to ask him in, for we have spent these days exceeding alone, but noticed him looking strangely at Ralph. Did then remember old anger, and unhappy wedding, and Whittier speaking ill of mere beasts. Supplied him then a haughty expression that did send him away.

  After, and alone again in our cabin, unable to eat for remorse. Fed salt horse to Ralph, but he would not take it. Wishes only to lie with his head fully hidden. Poor Ralph, and I much stricken by regret to have treated Whittier badly, and now to be eating the cheese that he brought.

  3rd. Later. Surely now it is night, and the hours grow monstrous. Storm appears to become worse, and water seeping through timbers. Heart exceeding heavy for mother and father. Spoke to them last in anger. Have tried to sleep but cannot. Only comfort in shape of Ralph’s body, curled here at my side.

  Sweet head. Familiar knob of his skull, white down on his chin. Flat temples. Surely there is goodness and light, but only wish to send letter to father, carrying a full-enough weight of my thanks.

  (1)

  The Memoirs of Stephen R. Chinn: Chapter 4

  Texas State Correctional Institution, Texarkana; August 2040

  As you know, and counted against me at trial, my algorithm worked beyond my most hopeful predictions. Time after time, the women returned. We talked. Involved, we spiraled past banalities, pressing outward until the intensity of the conversation reached such a threshold that my conversational partner was forced to call the end of the fight. By which I mean she would kiss me. Reach down to take my creaturely paw. Lead me out to a car, drive me back to a house, pull me into bed if not because I was handsome or charming then because she was compelled to halt the intensification of a conversation that had expanded past conventional limits.