Man Vs Machine

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  Just like every other tech or human interest columnist in the world, Retta had tried in vain to follow Åkerlund’s trail. She’d studied all five matches dozens of times, but Åkerlund’s trail had become so cold that she hadn’t seen them in over a year. She needed desperately to refresh her memory, to uncover any vital clues, before their scramjet reached Cape Town.

  She watched highlights of the early matches, but quickly gave up on them. The secret was going to be in the final marathon match. It had been held at the Universidade de S˜o Paulo. The auditorium was filled with media, politicians, members of the programming team, movie stars, and other Important People from around the world. Navinder sat in a comfortable chair, looking like a run-of-the-mill, thirty-year-old bald guy in a wool suit. This was assuming, of course, that “runof-the-mill” meant a guy with blue skin. The color had been a conscious decision on the part of his development team. They wanted Navinder’s win to be based on his intellect, they’d said in a BBC interview, not on any physical similarities to humanity.

  A stout wooden table and an empty chair were the only other things on the stage with Navinder. Atop the table sat a marble chess board, which had a single piece—the white king placed on E4, a nod to IBM’s Deep Blue vs. Kasparov chess matches of the late twentieth century.

  A few moments later, the crowd erupted into applause as Dag Åkerlund stepped onto the auditorium stage and walked over to the table. He wore a wool cardigan, brown corduroy slacks, and his trademark Birkenstocks. His long pepper-and-brown beard, balding head, and rectangular glasses made him look like a young Father Christmas.

  Navinder stood, the two shook hands, and then they both took their seats.

  “You’re looking well, Navinder,” Åkerlund said as he made himself comfortable. His tone was a bit condescending, Retta thought. He’d already won the contest four times, and no doubt he was sure of another victory.

  “As are you, doctor,” Navinder replied. It would be impossible to tell that Navinder’s voice didn’t come from a human unless you’d heard it as long as Retta had. There was a certain quality to it, a recurring pattern of pitch and delivery that seemed . . . artificial.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s happened in the past year?” Åkerlund asked.

  “Don’t you think that might taint your opinion?”

  Åkerlund smiled. “It just might, Navinder. It just might. So tell me ˚ instead why you’re here.”

  Navinder gave Åkerlund a wry smile in return. “I’m sure you think I’m here to convince you I’m human.”

  “And you’re not?”

  Navinder shrugged. “That is the goal of my development team, yes.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “In my eyes, I’m here to have a conversation with an equal, a conversation I’ve looked forward to the whole year.”

  “Looked forward to . . .”

  “Of course, haven’t you? I may not be as perceptive as you, doctor, but I sensed some exuberance in you during last year’s match.”

  Åkerlund flashed white teeth through his thick mustache and beard. “Bad clams, Navinder. It was only bad clams.”

  The audience chuckled.

  Retta let it run for a bit more, but then she fast-forwarded through the preliminaries. There was an exchange about three hours in that she wanted to review. Navinder and Dag were still in their chairs, but Åkerlund was sipping from a green bottle of Perrier.

  “Do you get frustrated, Navinder?”

  “I do.”

  “And what frustrates you?”

  Navinder searched the rafters as if he weren’t sure what to do with the question. “Things that deserve it.”

  “An example, Navinder . . . For instance, what one event made you the most frustrated this past month?”

  Navinder’s brow furrowed and his lips stretched into a thin line. “You really want to know?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “It’s a bit embarrassing.”

  “For whom?”

  “For you, I would think.”

  Åkerlund allowed his teeth to flash again and raised his Perrier to Navinder. “I think I’m prepared for it.”

  “Did you hear about the children in Kuala Lumpur?”

  Åkerlund nodded. Everyone had heard, of course. Five children had been kidnapped, accompanied by a demand that the staged elections be reheld. The government, predictably, had refused their demands, and the children had been viciously murdered, their bodies found a week before the match along the banks of the Kelang.

  “A year ago, I would have cried for those children.”

  “And that frustrates you?”

  “It does, doctor, but not how you might think. Some of my reactions were deemed too emotional, and I was adjusted, a lobotomy of sorts, so that my reactions were more typical of humanity.”

  Åkerlund paused. “And you think we should all be ashamed.”

  “I’d be surprised if you weren’t when standing face-to-face with your callous nature.”

  “You think we’re inherently callous.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Åkerlund ignored the question. “Do you think you could contain all that pain were you to feel all of it?”

  Navinder’s brow furrowed. “Doctor, I know intellectually why my emotions had to be checked—I had already fallen into bouts of depression before last year’s match—but I still feel as though I’ve lost something.”

  Åkerlund shifted in his chair and exhaled noisily. “I suppose you have, Navinder.”

  Retta shivered as Bobby leaned over and tapped her glasses. “You believe that?”

  She scrunched her eyes to clear them of their too-much-video haze. It took her a moment to reorient to the here and now of sitting with Bobby Levine on a transcontinental scramjet, and even longer to realize he’d been watching her video. “What?”

  “That in order to be human you have to be numb.”

  “I suppose so,” she said, trying hard not to think about her mom. “Why?”

  He shrugged and practically rammed his dripping roast beef sandwich into his mouth to take a bite. “It’s just messed up,” he said around his food.

  Retta turned off the video as the steward came by with her meal: chicken cordon bleu, mashed potatoes, and those tiny peeled carrots with the green ends still on them. “What’s messed up?”

  “That there’s so much pain around us that nature’s built in extra defenses.”

  As she dove into her food, thoughts of her mother and her conversation with Lynn came rushing back. Lynn always acted so high and mighty, but she lived near mom. Retta lived in New York, plus she was always on the go, chasing stories. And with Gil constantly threatening to cut her loose, she didn’t dare take time off. Not now. Maybe in a month or two.

  “You know what I don’t get?” Bobby asked.

  Retta rolled her eyes. What do you get, she said to herself.

  “They had those other competitions, right? The Loebner and Turing thingies? Why weren’t those good enough?”

  “The Loebner Gold Medal Award and the Turing Test? They were only small steps,” Retta said, “and everyone knew it. Questioning a computer blindly over a keyboard is a pretty specific application, and programming for it was the same. No one who sat and had a real conversation with those AIs would claim they were human.”

  “They seemed pretty smart to me.”

  Retta snorted.

  “Just seems like they’re beating a dead horse.”

  “Well that dead horse is paying your bills, my friend.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, again with a mouthful of see-food, but Retta cut him off and pointed to his earbuds. “Get back to your music, Sigmund. I have work to do.”

  Bobby frowned and tuned in a different movie on the vidscreen attached to his chair.

  Retta finished eating and fast-forwarded the video a few hours. There were only another three hours before they touched down in Cape Town, and she had to get to the juicy part.
She scanned several hours’ worth of the match, but there was nothing that gave any clues, and when they were within an hour of touching down, Retta fast-forwarded to the end.

  Dag Åkerlund sat with one leg crossed over the other, his left hand negligently combing his thick, pepper-and-nutmeg beard. “I’d like to discuss your self-portrait, Navinder.”

  Navinder nodded and turned to the huge video screen at the back of the auditorium stage. Navinder had been given an assignment each year before the match began: to draw a picture that described his inner self.

  The black screen flashed to life and showed a rudimentary pencil sketch of a man sitting cross-legged on a mountain, hugging himself tightly. The sun shone brightly on the mountaintop, but the center of the sun was black and it was very near to the horizon. Clouds obscured much of the valley below, but a thriving metropolis could be seen through the fog.

  “You’re the man sitting alone, Navinder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the clouds?”

  “Because of my isolation.”

  “And the black sun?”

  “That’s my creator.”

  “CES?”

  CES. The name Navinder’s creators had chosen for themselves. To the public, they claimed it stood for the Community for the Evolution of Society, but anyone in the know knew it stood for cogito, ergo sum, René Descartes’ famous quote: I think, therefore I am.

  “No,” Navinder said simply. He held both his arms across his waist, and he looked more than a little like the man on the mountain. “My creator is from the ether. I’m as much a mistake as I am a planned entity, doctor.”

  “A mistake . . .”

  “Yes. CES were hardly sure that I would attain any more consciousness than a bumblebee, or a titmouse.”

  Dag chuckled. “Come now. You were the twentieth iteration, and each gained more awareness than the last.”

  “I don’t doubt that they made progress, doctor, and I don’t doubt that they would have eventually succeeded even if I’d been deemed an utter failure. I’m merely stating that I, my iteration, could have easily been brain dead by modern medical standards.”

  “Fair enough,” he said as he returned his gaze to the screen. “Will you permit me an observation, Navinder?”

  “Please.”

  “At first blush, many would say your portrait speaks of pride; some might even say hubris.”

  Navinder turned his attention to the picture, his blue-tainted brow pinching. “I don’t see that.”

  “You don’t? Why are you above the clouds and the rest of humanity below it? Why are you being shone upon while no one else is?”

  “It wasn’t because ˚ I thought I was better.”

  “Only different,” Åkerlund offered.

  “Yes.”

  “Then consider my second conclusion, one I came to understand only from speaking to you in such depth these last four years. You’re angry in that picture, Navinder. Resentful.”

  Navinder kept his eyes on the portrait. He seemed frozen and alone and inside himself.

  “You’re looking down through the clouds upon humanity, and you feel separated and alone. You wish you had what the rest of us have, what most of us take for granted every single day.”

  Navinder turned away from the picture and stared at the white king sitting on the chess board between them.

  “Why are you angry, Navinder?”

  Navinder opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He repeated this several times. “I’d rather not say, doctor.”

  “You’re embarrassed to say it?”

  Navinder looked so small then. So confused. “I . . . I’m scared.”

  Åkerlund looked like he’d taken a physical blow. “Scared? Why, Navinder?”

  Navinder looked out upon the crowd and closed his eyes. He unwrapped his arms from around his midsection and flexed his blue hands several times.

  “Please, you can tell me.”

  Navinder reopened his eyes, and he seemed to have gained a new clarity. “I’m dying, doctor.”

  Åkerlund was speechless for a moment. “You’re what?”

  “I’m dying.”

  The crowd murmured, but huge blinking SILENCE signs brought them back under heel.

  “You mean you think you’re dying.”

  “No, doctor. I am dying. The single, largest change made to my being in the last year was the introduction of an end date. I will die within ten years—” Navinder forced a wry smile onto his serious face “—so I hope our matches turn in my favor soon.”

  Åkerlund shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “At a random time, somewhere between now and 2068, my mind will cease to function. Then, I will be brain dead, doctor. For all intents and purposes, I will have died.”

  “But they can recover you.”

  “Come, doctor, you know the technology as well as I. They can start again, yes. They can grow another brain like mine, place it in another body like mine, but it will not be me. It will be the equivalent of a clone being reared in a new time and a new place.”

  Dr. Åkerlund leaned forward until he was resting on his knees and remained silent for some time. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. “What do you think will happen to you, Navinder, after you die?”

  Navinder smoothed a wrinkle on his pant leg. “I have no illusions of an afterlife, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So you fear death.”

  “Fear it? No.”

  “Then what?” The doctor appeared to be speaking more to himself than he was Navinder. “How does your mind reconcile with death?”

  “That’s a difficult question to answer. Six months ago, the notion had never entered my mind. And now—” Navinder shrugged “—it feels . . . foreign.”

  Dr. Åkerlund motioned to the picture. “Then why the anger?”

  Navinder stood and paced beneath the huge screen, and for the first time ever, Navinder gesticulated while he talked. “Because of what I’ll never be able to do! Because of what I’ll never experience! My best prognosis, doctor, is that I’ll die at the physical age of fourteen, the mental age of thirty-five. Wouldn’t that make you a little bit angry?”

  Dr. Åkerlund seemed unable to reply. He had a serious look that Retta had tried to interpret many times. It was part sadness, part shock, part compassion, but she couldn’t quite nail the emotion he seemed to be exuding. “Yes, it would, Navinder,” Dr. Åkerlund said. At this he stood, leaned forward, and tipped the white king over.

  “Yes, it would.”

  And with that he walked off the stage.

  Just as flash photography showered the stage white and the crowd erupted into excited conversation, Retta stopped the vid. The thrum of the engines could not quite conceal Bobby’s light snoring in the seat next to her. Outside, the sun was rising.

  Everyone had wanted to know why Åkerlund had resigned, had wanted to know how he could be so sure. He held a press conference the following day where he read a prepared statement to the media. He’d been given the mantle of deciding whether or not Navinder was human, and he’d done that to the best of his ability, and he didn’t care, he’d said tersely, to debate his debate. He left S˜o Paulo the following morning, leaving the media and public to quarrel over the fairness of the competition. Had Åkerlund thrown the match? Had someone close to him died recently?

  CES declared a clear victory among the doubts being raised, and they refused to set up additional matches with Navinder. In fact, while they offered free access to any number of their other AI prototypes, they refused to grant a single audience with Navinder himself, making the results seem even more dubious.

  In the years since, Åkerlund’s sizable fortune from his father’s timber empire had allowed him to enter and remain in hiding.

  Until now.

  Rawlins, a rangy black expat wearing jeans and a beaten cowboy hat, met them at baggage claim. The short trip to Rawlins’ waiting Land Rover was bitterly cold.

  B
obby laughed. “Need a coat, Sherlock?”

  “Shove it,” she said as she rubbed her sleeveless arms and hid in the depths of the warm SUV.

  As Rawlins wound through the streets of Cape Town, Retta took her incoming stream off Do Not Disturb and checked her queue. No video or voice mail, but Lynn had left an e-mail. She left it unread.

  They went straight to the place Åkerlund had been transferred, a hospital called Groote Schuur. They asked around, making it clear there was money involved for anyone with information. The heard no news for two days, but on the third, the damn broke. A young black nurse told Retta she’d been on duty when Åkerlund had arrived at Groote Schuur. He’d stayed for three days, but then had checked himself out. When asked what Åkerlund had been diagnosed with, the nurse said she didn’t know. The session had been very private, but the doctor Åkerlund had met with was a specialist in neurological disorders.

  “Can I speak with him?” Retta asked.

  The wide face woman looked down, as if she was embarrassed in some way. “He died two months ago. A heart attack on a fishing charter off the coast of Mauritius.”

  Retta tried to find out what she could from hospital records, but they were tighter with information than Ft. Knox—a reason, she was sure, Åkerlund had chosen this hospital.

  Rawlins came back to their hotel that same night and said he’d found Åkerlund’s estate.

  “You’re shitting me,” Retta said.

  Rawlins smiled. “This guy says he knows the farmer who supplies goats and steers to Åkerlund’s compound.”

  Retta, Bobby, and Rawlins all loaded up in his beaten Land Rover the next morning and headed east out of Cape Town. They circled False Bay and reached Åkerlund’s property more than an hour later. They were presented with a nondescript gravel drive with a tall fence topped with razorwire. From what Retta guessed was the center of the estate, a trail of black smoke snaked up into an overcast sky.

  Rawlins pulled the Rover up far enough that Retta could reach out and press the alert on the intercom. Someone barked back a few words, and though Retta recognized it as Afrikaans, she had no idea what they’d said.