Kill screen, p.7
Kill Screen, page 7
I stared at her blankly.
“He just walked upstairs to his office.”
I grunted some version of “thank you,” and the woman above me walked away, looking slightly concerned.
It took me a few moments to muster up the energy to push myself off the bench. I couldn’t suppress the groan necessary to exert that much energy. I had gone too long without real sleep, and a few minutes of accidental rest had only reminded me of how desperately I needed more. My muscles burned with lactic acid as they forced a body made out of sand down a long hallway of miniscule offices and frosted glass doors.
Through bleary eyes, I looked out a nearby window. A thin strip of pavement ran along a grassy knoll. I would have thought a college campus would be busy with activity, but from this narrow slit, the world looked empty.
I knocked on the professor’s door. There was no answer. I cracked it open, and stuck my head through. A tiny man sat in a small office filled with antiques and hundreds of overflowing books. With his back to me, he scribbled furiously at a desk stuffed to the brim with papers. He made no effort to stand or introduce himself.
“Professor Hironobu Hojo?”
He acted like he hadn’t heard me. I closed the door behind me, and cleared my throat.
“Excuse me, profess–”
He held up a hand while he finished scrawling a note. He didn’t look up as he spoke.
“My office hours are over.”
His smooth English accent seemed an odd fit for this Japanese-born gentleman.
“Dr. Albert Wily will be taking over my classes for the next term,” he continued. “You should speak with him.”
“I’m not a student, Professor Hojo. I’m here about a friend of mine. Dexter Hayward, I thought that…”
At the mention of Dexter’s name, Hironobu pivoted to face me.
“…that maybe you knew him,” I finished.
The professor eyed me for a moment.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Jack, Jack Valentine.”
I extended my hand, but he ignored it.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Valentine, but I don’t think I can help you.”
He turned back to his desk – back to his forceful scribbles.
He was lying.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Dexter is dead, sir. Can I ask how you knew him?”
This time Hironobu gave me his full attention.
“I don’t know who you are, or how you found out about our project, Mr. Valentine.”
He said my name with some disdain, as though he thought it didn’t belong to me.
“But I didn’t keep anything for you to buy, or steal, or copy. The project’s been scrapped.”
I held up my hands in defense.
“Whoa, wait a minute. I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Dexter was my friend and colleague. I found your card in his house.”
I pulled the man’s blood-tipped card from my pocket as proof.
“I thought…” I started. “Well, I don’t know what I thought. I guess, I thought I should tell you the news, in case you knew him.”
I frowned. This wasn’t going the way I’d planned.
Hiro eyed me for a moment with a softening expression.
“Dexter’s really dead?”
I nodded.
“What happened?”
“He uh…”
I swallowed a lump the size of my fist. I thought I was done delivering this news; I thought that dirty job was done.
“He’d been under a lot of stress, and he – uh – he killed himself.”
Hironobu grunted then looked thoughtfully towards one of his bookshelves. I could have been mistaken, but he actually seemed impressed.
“You and Dexter were working on a project together?” I gently pressed.
“Yes,” he said still exploring his bookshelf.
“What kind of project?”
Hiro rubbed the corners of his mouth in resignation.
“Your friend wanted my help with an artificial intelligence program.”
I leaned forward.
“Seriously?”
He nodded.
“The project sounded exciting – it was right up my alley – so I took a look at it.”
“This program? What was it called?”
The professor looked away silently for a moment, then turned back to me.
“What was that?”
“What was the name of this AI program you helped Dexter develop?”
“I’m afraid we weren’t very inventive. The original title was Evolved Virtual Intelligence. For short, we called it Project–”
“Evi,” I exclaimed excitedly.
“You do know about it?” Hiro asked.
“Not really, I…uh…I ran across the program while sorting Dexter effects.”
His eyes went wide.
“You’ve seen it? Where is it now?”
I felt oddly compelled to lie. I told a half-truth instead.
“On one of Dexter’s old home computers.”
“You should destroy it.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it? What does it do?”
“Those are three entirely different questions, requiring three very involved answers.”
I waited.
Hiro cleared his throat.
“Mr. Valentine, are you aware that the computing world is in desperate need of a new way to program?”
I shrugged. “No.”
“We haven’t come to grips with our own mortal limits yet. It’s amazing that computer engineering works as well as it does. Hundreds, even thousands, of people worked on the software that talks to a computer’s compilers, and that code was written decades ago by a different set of people, and those compilers have to run on hardware systems that were designed by a completely different group of engineers. No one has a truly complete view of how it all works. Redundancy programming only works on problems we can anticipate, and even then, correctly functioning programs often function in unexpected ways. That’s why programmers end up with so many software bugs.”
“I’m familiar with some of those problems,” I said. “I’m a bit of a programmer myself.”
He ignored me.
“The point of Evi was, to not to create a program, but to create a new way of programming – one that would bypass these issues. We were trying to change the world.”
“How so?”
He waved me off.
“That’s a long class, and you are not my student. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
But I did.
“How about the beginning?”
Hiro looked at me and smiled.
“You’re a little like him, aren’t you?”
“Like Dexter?” I asked.
“Yes, you’re both very curious.”
I smiled. It was one of the best compliments I’d ever received.
“You have to go back a long ways to get to the beginning. The origin of Evi, like all programs, is built on the work of hundreds of pioneers. In the nineteenth century a logician named George Boole spelled out three basic variables, which are now used as the building blocks for all computer coding.”
“Boolian logic,” I said. “I’m familiar with it.”
Hiro wasn’t deterred. I was going to get a history lesson.
“But we can’t start there, that’s not the whole picture. You see…in the 1600’s, Dr. William Gilbert investigated the reactions between amber and magnets. He was actually the first person to record the word ‘electric’ when he published De Magnete, a report on the theory of magnetism.”
“Okay,” I nodded.
“But, his work was actually built off something else. It’s always built off something else. If you go further back, to around 600 BC, the Greeks discovered that straw particles were attracted to fur after the cloth had been rubbed against fossilized resin amber. Magnetic phenomena existed long before people understood the concept or even had words for it. For centuries, we’ve been trying to figure out how the forces around us work, but all our progress is just built off the work of those who came before us.”
It sounded like he was giving me one of his class lectures. It seemed like he wanted to talk – maybe he needed to talk. The man didn’t seem entirely stable.
“You see, man has been creating things throughout his entire history. Before the computer, came the light bulb. Before the light bulb, came the printing press. Before the printing press, came the clock. Humanity’s desire to have a hand in creation stretches as far back as we can look, to the very dawn of time when Adam began naming animals. It’s almost as though our entire race has been working towards…”
In true professorial style, Hiro pointed at me as he posed his next question.
“Towards what?”
How the hell was I suppose to know?
“I don’t know,” I shrugged.
“The world’s leading engineers and authors – history’s finest philosophers and scientists have all been seeking to encode the laws of human thought into complex, logical systems that can be used to solve every sort of problem. We’ve been trying to distill human life into a box – a box that will do all of humanity’s heavy lifting. A god box that will solve all our problems.”
Was that an answer? The professor was beginning to make me nervous. I didn’t know what he was talking about any more, or what any of this had to do with Dexter and his AI program.
“Are you saying human intelligence is nothing more than a complex computer system?”
“Well, that question opens up a nearly infinite number of philosophical ramifications, doesn’t it?” he said smiling.
I ran my fingers through my hair. We were getting way off track.
“I’m sorry Professor, but what exactly is Evi?”
He leaned back in his chair thoughtfully.
“What is Evi? That’s a good question. In the eighteenth century, a Swiss watchmaker by the name of Jaquet-Droz built an automaton call The Writer. This automated puppet could scrawl any pre-programmed sentence onto a piece of paper. With its chilling repertoire of human-like animations, the machine fascinated kings and emperors as far away as India and Japan. Rumor has it that Jacquet-Droz would even sometimes program his android to write the sentence ‘Cogito ergo sum.’”
“Descartes,” I said.
“Correct. The famous French philosopher’s Latin phrase, ‘I think therefore I am.’” Hiro nodded at me then added, “That is Evi.”
“Evi is an old Swiss robot?” I asked, confused.
But the professor wasn’t finished schooling me.
“In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer science professor at MIT, created a program called ELIZA. The program simulated human conversation by reposing questions using simple pattern matching rules: it was a chatterbot masquerading as a psychologist. But it fooled many into believing they were talking to a real person.”
The professor pointed at me again.
“That is Evi.”
“Professor Hojo, I don’t think I’m following–”
He held up a single finger for me to be quiet.
“Before that, in 1936, a British logician pioneered the synthesis of two separate fields: philosophy and engineering. This mathematical genius from Cambridge University published a paper on conceptual abstract computing machines. His name was Alan Turing, and he’s famous for kick starting the computer revolution. But one area of his research has been almost entirely neglected.”
I took the bait. “What’s that?”
“Turing had a theory that if a program – a ‘child machine’, if you will – could be raised into digital adulthood, then this machine would be capable of learning and even using human language intelligently. It would be a truly independent…artificial…intelligence.”
The professor glared at me and pointed. I knew what was coming.
“That is Evi,” he finished, leaning back in his chair. “It’s all built on the work of others. It’s all connected.”
“Can we back up a second?” I asked. “So, Evi is just an AI program you guys hoped would test your theories on electronic child rearing?”
“Just an AI program! Do you understand the complexities of a thinking machine? Think of all of humankind’s most impressive creations: everything from the Sistine Chapel to the Pyramids to the space shuttle. It’s not just impressive that man created all these masterpieces, because even a machine can create a building or paint a picture if it has the time, the motivation, and the skill. That kind of creation is called manufacturing, Mr. Valentine. That kind of creation is programmable.”
“Okay?”
“What made those achievements so spectacular – so different from any other – was the fact that their creator had the capacity to dream them up in the first place. What if we were able to create a machine that could do that? What if we could create a program that could dream? That kind of program wouldn’t be ‘just a program.’ It would be an intelligence.”
“But that’s impossible, right?”
“Impossible!” Hiro laughed. “Do you even know what’s impossible? We live in a world where machines fertilize our women – where virgins can have children. Soon, we’ll be engineering babies outside of the womb. We live in a world where we can put machines in our hearts to help them work. A world where we have daily conversations, through wires and satellites, with people who aren’t even in the same city. We live in a world where we genetically engineer our food, because our planet’s population is overextended. These things happen every day. They’re happening right now. So don’t tell me what’s impossible, because the definition of that word has proved somewhat elastic.”
Hiro stood. He was growing more animated with every second. I looked past his shoulder and out his window. The sun had set. Lightning flickered in the distance, and I could see the purple outlines of thick clouds. There was a storm coming. I could see it reflected clearly in the professor’s eyes.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should be going,” he said.
I stopped him at the door.
“Wait. I have to see this program again.”
“I told you I can’t help you. I’ve destroyed all my notes. Evi was a dream.”
“You never kept a copy of the program for yourself?”
“You misunderstand me, Mr. Valentine. A program called Evi exists, but it was a disaster. It caused nothing but pain, and I destroyed it. Your friend’s dream doesn’t exist.”
“But I don’t understand. What I saw was pretty impressive–”
“Then I suggest you forget what you’ve seen…before it kills you like it killed your friend.”
I was stunned by the idea that this program had driven Dexter to suicide. Hiro pushed past me and disappeared down the hall.
Off in the distance, the thunder rolled.
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CHAPTER NINE: THE BURIED DEAD
The explosion still echoes through my mind. On quiet days – sometimes without even listening for it – I can still hear the gunshot. I can still smell the smoke in the air…still taste its residue on my tongue. In my mind, I run towards her as she falls. But even then, I know she’s gone.
Her name was Jill. It seemed like a perfect match. A story of legend: Jack and Jill. It was a fairytale existence. Young love, wrapped in an embrace so tight, they became one self – one life. Each half supported the other. Together meant they were complete. Together meant happiness. It was beautiful.
I failed to remember one important detail about the legend: It ends in tragedy. When one fell down, the other came tumbling after.
Her funeral was small. She didn’t have much family left. Her father and mother had long since passed away, and her brother was backpacking in Tibet at the time. No aunts. No uncles. No cousins. She’d never known her grandparents, though a few friends stopped by for the service. And, of course, her sister was there.
We put Eternally Loved and Forever Missed on her gravestone.
I hated it.
Five words were not enough. A whole book is not enough to describe how passionately she is still loved, or how continually mourned she will forever be. I’ve stood in the cemetery nearly every month since, staring at the sentence inscribed on the headboard of her new bed. It’s never felt right.
After her funeral, I played a game of spiritual chess, arguing with God over the injustice of her death. My fingers went numb from the cold. My face was raw from the wind and my overcoat saturated from the downpour that – as happens in all good movies about the dying – started right after we laid her body in the ground. Even then, I felt no desire to leave. I felt no desire for anything. I’d come tumbling down after.
Since then, I have come to believe that it should always rain at funerals. It should rain with devotion. Rain does more than set a mood – rain mourns. It celebrates the event. I believe it is nature’s way of honoring the dead with tears – a respect unmatched by the words of men.
Two years after I buried my wife, I found myself putting another body in the ground – another life I cared about. I wanted nature to express my pain. I wanted the sky to cast over, and I wanted it to rain with a blistering force that knocked over cars and uprooted trees.
I wanted the sky to bleed.
Dexter’s funeral happened on a late, sunny afternoon. It was unnaturally humid, just warm enough to make wearing a suit uncomfortable. Nature was in bloom with green in every direction. There is often a surprising amount of life inside the yards where we lay our dead.
I had arrived late to the service, and received looks of shame and disgust from people I didn’t know. Dexter’s father had outdone himself. Everything from the flowers at the service, to the church that housed them, to the casket that would soon sit six feet under, was overly garish.
Claire held my hand through the service, and handed me a tissue when I burst into tears at the gravesite. It felt strange to cry so openly in public. I hadn’t done so in years, but I still remembered how. After the service, Claire left to fetch the car. I needed a few more minutes at the grave.
