by Memory
I loved coding. For the first time I felt superior to Emma. She could play Mozart backwards if she wanted, but here I was with my own secret cult language that only the initiated understood. It was like having magic powers: registering sequential codes into the software in the knowledge that at the end of the tunnels light and clarity would emerge, like fairies out of the knoll.
Hiroaki and I became good friends. He had a deeply ingrained Japanese sense of honour which I greatly admired. Everything he taught me he taught with clarity and precision, and would always make sure that I understood it thoroughly. He never taught coding in isolation. It was always framed in a social context. We went to several conferences where this aspect was stressed. I remember going with him to the First International Cultural Robotics Conference in Kobe, where I was particularly taken with the talk ‘Towards Socializing Non-anthropomorphic Robots by Harnessing Dancer’s Kinaesthetic Awareness’. The researchers were showing how dance movements could be used to develop body flexibility in the androids we were building.
The turning point came on our visit to Seoul. A small group of us were instructed to go over there to attend the parent company’s seminar on Social Robotics. At the end of the week I was asked to go for dinner with Ban Hun-hyun, one of the major shareholders. For some reason I thought he’d be a young entrepreneur. He was in fact a rather distinguished elderly gentleman. He wore a long white kaftan shirt over momohiki-style baggy trousers He had perfect manners and decorum. We met in the foyer of the Grand Hyatt and he was obviously well-regarded there. They led us through to an exquisite private garden room at the back. He had beautiful English, and approached technical issues with a poet’s grace. Computers were like flower ponds, and coding was the modern version of haiku. He told me something of his family background – his father had been a rice farmer who’d lost his land in the great flood and was forced to move into the city where he began life again as a market-trader, selling vegetables. Mr Hun-hyun reminded me of my own Grampa. He had the same slow, roundabout way of saying things, yet always with a purpose.
Looking back on it, I suppose in fact that’s why I was deceived. He was old and venerable, so I graced him with good intentions. He praised me immensely.
‘Mr Nagano says you are the best,’ he told me. ‘The very best. And not just with the details of things. What do you call it? The software? But with the more important side of it. You know the story of the Holy Grail of course? Well, we have our own version of it. There was a man who grew very old – even older than I am,’ and he smiled. ‘And one day he knelt down by the pond to pick up a lily when he saw his own reflection in the water. And he was as young and beautiful as he had ever been. He had found the holy grail.’
His eyes were bright blue and shining.
‘You know what people want, of course?’
I looked at him. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, for he appeared to be growing younger as he spoke.
‘To live forever,’ he said. ‘To be forever young. Like me.’
And he was back as he had been at first, quiet and distinguished. His eyes had turned silver grey.
‘I can offer you a share,’ he said. ‘What we want to do is to develop a proper android who will be more human than any human. Who will laugh and cry, and fall in love and feel despair. That will be as beautiful as a wild flower in a field. And once we perfect the prototype, everyone over forty will want to be one. Those under that age think they already have that anyway,’ he said, smiling.
So I sold my story. Handed over the rights to Mr Hun-hyun that evening in the perfumed garden room. I would develop the software from the information I had and send it to his people who would work on the physical engineering side. The percentage fee was substantial enough, though that’s not why I did it. It would be fascinating to see what had gone given new life.
‘We’ll try and showcase the product at the Toronto Expo in eighteen months’ time,’ he said to me. ‘The time it takes for bamboo grass to regenerate.’
I worked hard on slinging code. Over and above my own version of what I remembered, I had also taken photographs and video and had recorded Grampa singing and telling stories and Granma cutting the roses in the garden and all that visual and verbal data was critical in establishing the engineering platform for such mundane things as linguistic pattern, head position, tilt, eye tracking and so on for the APIs (the Application Programming Interfaces). The product itself was being assembled in Seoul.
Emma accompanied me to the Expo. It was a beautiful early spring week in Toronto. We arrived early on the Monday and after checking into the hotel took a walk up towards the river, which was adorned with daffodils on either side. I’ve never been back in that yellow city since. Mr Hun-hyun had sent a message saying that he couldn’t be there for Friday’s unveiling, but wished me well.
‘It’s been a tremendous success,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt you will be astonished at what we’ve produced.’
I went to some of the conference presentations which took place from Tuesday to Thursday, while Emma visited the galleries. She was fascinated by the works of Gagnon, and especially Edwin Holgate, and later on I believe she managed to buy some of his finest smaller works. The AI workshops I found most useful were the ones titled ‘Using Social Robots to Improve the Quality of Life in the Elderly’, though the most enjoyable was the one on the effects of an impolite versus polite robot playing rock-paper-scissors. Oh, they have emotions, oh yes they do! Especially when trained not to lose.
The hall was darkened on Friday morning for the first public display of the ‘MacDonell Android’, as it was promoted. In the absence of Mr Hun-hyun the session was introduced by Hiroaki, who made a splendid short speech on the ethics of artificial intelligence.
‘It’s like a tree,’ he said. ‘It exists. It doesn’t need to justify its existence. It just is.’
He then stood silent on the stage for a moment before calling out the two names that sent a shiver through me:
‘Magnus. Rachel.’
And to my horror the two of them walked on to the stage, side by side, as if alive. Yet they had no life: all the features were right, and the walk and the sing-song voice of Grampa and the tender way Granma glanced at him were correct, but…
There was something obscene about it. They themselves were not there.
Life is more than mere motion and voice and gesture.
I shut my eyes tight, calling up other images to replace the dead ones on the stage. Grampa tying the silver-fly bait on to the hook. Granma polishing the brass on Saturday evening while listening to The King’s Singers on the radio. I left the darkened auditorium. Living memories continue to heal the scars of the steel and plastic android images I saw momentarily on the stage.
Afterwards, I confronted Hiroaki.
‘I never imagined for a moment it would cause offence,’ he said. ‘We thought you’d be pleased. It was Mr Hun-hyun’s idea.’
‘It would be.’ I looked straight into Hiroaki’s eyes. ‘Is he…?’
‘Yes. My grandfather.’
‘Good God. You too, Hiroaki?’
I didn’t tell Emma what had happened. When I got back to the hotel she’d just returned from the gallery and was so excited, wanting to show me the catalogue of all the works she’d viewed during the day.
‘Look. ‘The Mother and Daughter’. Isn’t that gorgeous? And here – Lismer’s work. ‘Rain in the North Country’, 1920.’
They were lovely – the nude mother, with the clothed daughter looking down on the open book in her mother’s hand.
I began packing the following evening as soon as we got back to Manhattan. Emma was in the bath. Schubert’s Impromptu in G Major on the iPod. The old recording of Kempff. Either she’d ask or I’d tell her. She called through.
‘Going on a journey?’
‘Aye.’
‘Anywhere special?’
‘Home.’
The long piano notes hung in the air, as Kempff waited for the ri
ght moment to distil the next one. He was long finished by the time Emma came out in her bathrobe.
‘Home?’ she said.
‘Yes. To Oxford. I can’t bear the work any longer. It’s… it’s all wrong.’
‘So what happened today?’
‘Maybe I saw the future and became afraid.’
‘Of?’
‘Myself.
She stood near me.
‘I’m afraid too,’ she said. ‘Which is why I’m staying here. At home. To work my own way through things. But I’ll come and see you. Promise.’
17
I HAD TO give the tenants in Oxford a month’s notice, so meantime I rented an apartment in London. The New York office were in touch with me, either angry or distressed about my attitude. I wasn’t sure which. Perhaps they regretted the money and time they’d invested in training me, or perhaps they were genuinely surprised that I had completely misunderstood their intentions.
To their credit, they didn’t let go that easily. The main marketing director, Richard ‘Rick’ Steele and his assistant Sue emailed me to say they were passing through London on their way to Tokyo. They had five hours to spare at Heathrow. Would I meet them? We met at The Three Bells pub at Terminal 3.
‘So. How are you?’ Rick asked.
‘Fine. Just fine.’
‘We’re sorry…’
I waved their concern away.
‘It’s okay. It… it’s what happens.’
‘Yes. Still…’
We ordered drinks. Wine for them, tea for me.
‘Organic of course?’ Rick asked as he went up to order.
‘Of course.’
‘I apologise for what happened,’ Rick said. ‘I thought it was what we all wanted.’
‘“We” may have wanted it, Richard. But I didn’t.’
‘It’s the future, Gavin. You know that as well as I do. You should not fear the future. People always feared the future. Cave people feared the wheel. Horsemen feared the engine. Men feared the emancipation of women. The future is always fearful unless you control it.’
I laughed.
‘Rick! Really? You know where it’s all heading, Mr Steele. A future controlled by algorithms. By multinationals. Despite your best ethics, commerce will rule and steer you down pathways that even you will reject sooner or later. That’s what I saw on the stage under the control of Hiroaki. Or was it his grandfather? Mr Ban Hun-hyun. A beautiful name. I fully understand that Artificial Intelligence will do beautiful things as well. The problem is not what computers can do. It’s what humans do.’
He was silent, maybe conceding the point. Who knows?
‘It’s a terrible pity that all your knowledge – all your research – will go to waste,’ Sue said.
‘Oh, I don’t think it will, ‘I said. ‘There are other… perhaps more basic ways to use it.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as this. Simply sitting here waiting in Terminal 3 talking and telling stories.’
‘Well, it’s one old-fashioned ways of doing it. But we wanted to get final value out of your researches so…’
‘The last pound of flesh?’ I interrupted.
‘…have you learned anything that would be of lasting use to us?’
‘Only that the happiest people live in a blessèd state of stupidity.’
‘We know that,’ Rick said. ‘That’s how we make money. By making sure they continue to live there. Anything else?’
The most useful thing I’d learnt was that everyone had a story. A mythology into which they retreated when the going got tough. Calum to his fairies. Mr Johnstone to his drink. Rick and Sue to their bright future in AI. Myself to…for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. But I didn’t say any of that.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing that would be “useful”, as you put it.’
I knew very well that all such information would be passed on to the machine makers, to improve performance. I also understood that what was not said would equally be reported back.
‘He didn’t answer,’ they’d write, ‘meaning he was hiding something.’
The tannoy called the flight for Hanoi. Then announced that their flight to Tokyo was delayed for an hour. We ordered some food. A chicken salad for me, and sushi for them.
‘Might as well get some practice in,’ they said.
‘So. That’s it. The end for you then?’ Rick asked.
‘No. Just the beginning. No more executive orders. No more corporate planning. Just one day at a time.’
‘Sweet Jesus?’ said Rick.
They ordered another bottle of wine.
‘Do you really believe in it, Rick? Or you, Sue? In the ethics of the thing.’
They laughed.
‘Which ones are these, Gav? Those involved in developing a technology that will help people in their old age?’
‘No, Rick. The ethics which take every human trait and mechanise it for commercial purposes.’
They laughed.
‘Oh, not that hoary old chestnut, Gav. Isn’t everything commercial? Sex, war, leisure. To be bought and sold. What do you think prostitution and soccer are? Hobbies? Don’t you have a mobile there in your hand? Cars, planes, computers, x-ray machines…? Good God, let’s not exalt the Luddites again.’
They had a point. There is no rational argument against progress.
‘Too much collateral damage, though. Millions unemployed. The sea ice melting. Algorithms steering our lives. Drones killing children. But then, you know all that already. Profit from it.’
‘It was always like that. Except in a more primitive way. Stones, then spears and bombs. At least social media has democratised the world.’
‘Nonsense. It’s just given the mob a voice. Handed them the twenty-first century equivalent of medieval pickaxes to hack their way into the White House.’
‘It’s called democracy. We walked in there with Donald in broad daylight. Same as Nixon and Kennedy and all the rest of them. None of it was hidden.’
‘Except for the Putin bit?’ I asked.
‘That too was known, Gav. If it wasn’t Trump, it would be someone else. Puppets are a dime a dozen. The thing is, we’ve earned the trust of the poor,’ Sue said, smiling. ‘The future is ours. What’s the phrase? The post-truth generation. You could be the bright light in our darkness if you want to salve your conscience?’
‘Not if it means selling my soul.’
‘For what doth it profit and all that?’
‘Something like that.’
They were friends as well as colleagues.
‘We’ll be sorry to lose you, Gav. You bring a certain kind of… humanity to the table. And we’ll miss that. It would have been useful.’
‘Don’t undersell yourselves,’ I said. ‘Despite appearances, both of you are all too human! It’s what makes us different from machines – our hopes and lusts. Our flesh.’
They were lovers as well as friends and colleagues.
‘So. What do you plan to do with yourself?’ Rick asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know. This and that. Become an ornithologist. Base myself at Grampa’s farm and nurture things. Plough the land. Rear pigs. Keep hens. Guard the sea lavender of the salt marshes. All those little things which remind me I’m made of dust.’
They laughed.
‘The great escape, is it? Back to nature and all that. Shall we call you Adam?’
‘No. The very opposite. The great commitment.’
‘Don’t get all holy on us, Gav. You’re not going to save the world. You’re as dependent on technology as all the rest of us.’
‘It’s not about technology. It’s about values. Big, global and corporate or small, local and organic. I’m learning how to use a spade and pencil again.’
‘Listen to Mr Pious,’ Sue said. ‘You honestly think you’ll be able to save yourself from the coming storm? After all, you’re equally responsible. Equally guilty.’
‘Of?’
‘Compromise. Collusion –
you didn’t walk to London, did you?’
Silence.
‘Not any more. I’ve done with it. Repented, if you will.’
I think they pitied me rather than believed me.
‘Back to the future?’
‘No. That was Trump’s call. The one you voted for. The alternative fact.’
‘And your choice, Gav? Just to drop out?’
‘No. The very opposite. To drop in. To live as a human being, not as an extension of a machine. To sow and plant and reap and grow. I’ll travel by mule if I need to, and dig the earth by hand. You’ll remember those old-fashioned things I was supposed to feed into the robots we were working on? Stories and fables and songs and religious beliefs and traditions and customs and all that stuff? Things that were intended to humanise the machine. That were meant to inject empathy and understanding and a sense of justice and a common cause into the neural network. All that stuff I digitised for you. Until I realised that none of it could be programmed without flesh. That a song not sung by a fragile human being is no song at all.’
‘Quite a speech,’ Rick said.
‘No, Rick. It’s not a speech, it’s a story. My story. Jung predicted it all more than a century ago when he said that the reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.’
‘They have told their story,’ Sue said. ‘Your problem is that you don’t like their story because it’s not yours. It’s just a different story now, and you’d better believe it, Gav. What you’re really shying away from is the coming story. The machine’s story. The new humans that will emerge from beneath the silicone surfaces. It’s not Hansel and Gretel, but it will do just fine because it will fit the day.’
‘I’ve met them,’ I said. ‘I still prefer the old ones. The ones with souls.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ she said. ‘Who’s to say that our new machine beings won’t have “souls”, as you put it? What makes you so special? They too will have a history, relationships, personalities. They too will sing and dance and tell stories and believe some things and not others. None of the things you’re concerned about are the problem. Amazon, Google, Trump. These are just the Gutenberg and the Caxton and the Nero of their day. Poor Donald is not the disease, just the symptom.’
