Becoming Human, page 10
“Maybe I’m crazy, too.”
“Huh? Why do you say that?”
“Like father, like son! Will you pour one for me? I’d like a whiff.” He laughed again, even though I saw no humor in it. But it was a good kind of laugh, one that might have come from someone who had just realized he might be in line for a Nobel prize.
He stepped behind me and gave me a good whiff of the champagne. “I think we’ll cancel the pain experiments for now. I’m sure we can manage to give you some serious pain, but I’m not sure I’d want to do that to you. I mean, we wouldn’t want to harm you if you were human… .”
The Prosecco bouquet was somewhat interesting, but not spectacular. “No, I want you to do it, despite my trepidation. I need to understand everything about what it is to be a human being. Otherwise none of this means anything, and I would never be of any use to you as a model for human response to whatever stimuli you need to impose. Everything we’ve done so far would be for naught. Besides, it’s part of the protocol. The NIMH will not like it if you change it. Please don’t deprive me of this opportunity.”
“Oscar, you are remarkable.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll speak to Susumu about being as gentle as possible with this.”
“Thank you again.”
“But we also need to figure out how to objectify some of the experiments we are doing with you.”
“I understand.”
We had another drink and another whiff of the wine, another laugh or two. Then he powered me down and went home for the night, pulling his squeaky little suitcase with him. I suddenly realized that life is not easy for anyone, for any human being, artificial or otherwise, smart or dumb, attractive or not. The only difference is the degree of difficulty.
That night I had my first dream—perhaps it was the Prosecco. I was lying on a table and several people were standing around me. They were all dressed in white, but they had no faces. Each of them had a simple tool of some kind: a screwdriver, a hammer, a pair of pliers. They were tinkering with me in some way, but I couldn’t feel anything. Lights were flashing, and there were loud noises every few seconds. I asked them to turn off the sound and light, but they ignored me. It was as if I were just an object. But when I woke up it was quiet, and I was alone. It felt good not to be tampered with, but I also felt what I suspect was a tinge of fear. I think we human beings all live somewhere between elation and dread. Even in our dreams.
Interjection
Yes, this is exactly how I remember the conversation with Oscar that night. I thought we had reached another plateau, had made another quantum leap in both his state of awareness and in mine. I mentioned earlier that there comes a time when you suddenly find you love your dog. But no matter how close you are to a dog, or any other animal, it isn’t human. It seemed to me that with Oscar, we had reached that level. Technically he wasn’t human, either (though he was getting closer all the time). But, for me, that conversation was exactly like talking to a human being. Whatever he was, from that point on I thought of him as fully human.
And to this day I still don’t understand how it happened. It wasn’t as if he had evolved from something more primitive, like a newly-discovered caveman, grown more and more sophisticated as his knowledge and understanding increased until he finally crossed some dividing line. He had evolved from nothing. Of course, I remember the early days when he couldn’t speak, couldn’t hear, and all the rest. As Oscar suggested at the beginning of this report, he must have evolved in much the same way an embryo develops in the womb, or a baby grows into an adult. But it can, in no way, explain his intelligence and erudition. We gave him a few brain cells, and from that came sight and hearing and speech, and suddenly we had a human being, if a limited, seriously handicapped one without organs and limbs. I can’t emphasize enough how astounding this is. Once certain basics were in place, his personality seemed to come about on its own. It would have to mean that being human has much simpler requirements than anyone might have imagined. There must be something intrinsically intelligent in the arrangement of human neurons, even for an entity like Oscar, who had the brain capacity of a fruit fly. If so, perhaps it would be possible to create a whole race of Oscars!
On the other hand, what had I expected? We had wanted to create a humanoid brain with all, or at least some of, the emotions that humans are capable of. Since it was to be patterned after an actual human brain, it should have performed like one in many respects. Indeed, that was the goal of the project. But I didn’t expect it to happen this way—who would? Talking with Oscar was like talking to a friend, albeit one in a huge box. That shed a whole new light on the program. What could we ethically do to him? Perhaps we should also ask what we could do for him?
Like Oscar, I didn’t sleep much that night. Early the next morning I understood that the crucial factor here was what he thought about these things. What he would want us to do if he had a say in the matter. If we had created something very much like a human brain, it might have its own wants and needs which could outweigh the very things it was supposed to be useful for, just as we might train a dog to walk beside us, only to see everything crumble when a cat or squirrel made an unexpected appearance.
So that’s where things stood just at the moment Oscar had reached a new level in his development: we were suddenly faced with the prospect of picking up stakes and moving to an entirely different laboratory.
The irony of all of this was that Frank Wilkes and I were once good friends. We discussed our work over countless lunches, our families visited each other often, we even went on vacations together once or twice. It may sound like a cliché, but the fact is that he was like a father to me, all the more so since I had lost my own father to cancer when I was a graduate student. But now he was someone I didn’t know anymore. And now he desperately wanted to continue working—his wife had died and his children were far away—and he was willing to fight for the opportunity to stay active and relevant, regardless of how it affected anyone else. Yet, I completely understood his position. In fact, it happens all the time, both in academe and elsewhere. In his shoes I might have reacted the same way.
I hoped we wouldn’t have to face up to a change of scenery—we had enough problems with the project itself. Yet (I told myself) this is true of every advancement ever made by science. Every one of them was fraught with unforeseen problems and complications. Many microbiologists have died fighting disease outbreaks, aircraft development had cost many test pilots their lives, Mme. Curie died of radiation poisoning. You never know what you’re going to get. Oppenheimer was cursed for his work in developing nuclear weapons, and even Einstein had regrets about his discovery of the enormous energy contained in the atom. You forge ahead, hoping for the best, trusting that your work will be more beneficial than harmful to humanity.
Not that I expected Oscar to become a danger to anyone. His disposition, or personality, if you will, seemed benign, and even benevolent. He merely wanted to continue to develop, to become more and more human. That left me with the question of how best to proceed with him, regardless of whether we stayed or were forced to leave. Now that we knew he already had unsuspected sensibilities, should we immediately attempt to give him the other senses, and the emotions necessary to do psychological experiments on him?
I decided to talk all this over with the rest of the “crew,” and a consensus was reached: even though no one understood how he had become as human as he was, both the laboratory scientists and Oscar himself concluded that whatever we were doing had worked out well so far, and that we should continue along the same pathway to its natural conclusion, including the installation and testing of tiny pain sensors. We deferred the next step in his development until this critical experiment was successfully completed, and then we would invite him to participate in his own further progress.
There was one small change in the protocol: we decided that Oscar should have color vision. We probably should have given him that in the first place, but the black and white wide-angle security cameras were already available and, to save valuable grant money, we used them with him. So we took some of the supplementary funding we had just been awarded to give him new high-resolution color camera eyes. In retrospect, I think it was a good decision.
19
Before the pain receptors could be installed, the crew decided to give me color. I hadn’t been told about it before—I think it was supposed to be a surprise. Or maybe it was to take my mind off the upcoming pain experiments. One day D’Arcy came in with two new cameras, and they spent the rest of the morning replacing my old black and white ones with them. Since I had never seen anything in color, I didn’t know what to expect. I assumed that the differences in wavelength would amount to stronger variations in black and gray. Boy, was I wrong.
“First, we’re going to disconnect your old left eye,” David told me. “Then we’ll hook up the new camera there. Just before we turn it on, we’ll turn off your right eye so you won’t be confused by what you see. So you’ll be blind for a few seconds. Understand?”
“Yes, of course. No one can see without eyes.”
“Attaboy. You won’t be without sight for long. Just be patient while we turn on your color camera. Okay?”
“I will be patient. Thank you for your concern.”
Everyone in the lab was present except for Henry, who was in classes and meetings all day. The others were standing around, murmuring encouragement. I thought: this must be what surgery is like, or the first step in dismantling me for transfer to another laboratory.
“Okay, we’re going to blind you for a minute.”
Everything went black. I could still hear perfectly, but I couldn’t see a thing. Nothing new here—before I had eyes, there was a considerable time when I couldn’t see. It’s amazing that it takes so many senses to perceive the world. Without my vision I was still alive, but in a sense, I was less alive. I wondered whether there might be worlds where people had even more senses than humans do. What thrilling places these must be, almost like living in four dimensions.
“Here we go!” Suddenly I could see again, but only out of my left eye. For a second everything looked strange. Instead of the darks and lights I had become accustomed to, there was a different kind of perception altogether. An entirely new realm! I didn’t know what colors were represented by which wavelengths, but for a moment I didn’t care. It was beautiful! More than that: it was incredible! Until then I had no idea what things really looked like. Now I could see them as they really were. I looked at everyone’s smiling faces. They knew. I wish I could smile, too. Or cry. It was so unimaginably lovely!
Robyn pointed to her sweater. “This is red.” And to David’s shirt. “This is blue, and the vertical stripes are beige.” This went on all afternoon. Every color in the laboratory was identified. And amazingly, each one varied somewhat in intensity. For example, some yellows were stronger than other yellows. I certainly hadn’t expected that. It only added to the beauty of its perception. I have read that dogs and most other animals don’t see in color. How lucky humans are to be able to do that. And how tragic it must be to be colorblind. Then I remembered: only a few minutes earlier I could see only in black and white, and it never bothered me at all. How quickly our perspectives change!
I asked to see grass and sky.
“There ain’t no grass in here, man,” D’Arcy pointed out. “Or any sky either, unless they put in a window. But we’ll find you some pictures of them.”
“And a set of crayons or acrylics,” Robyn added. “So you can see the entire spectrum of colors. And maybe we can do some experiments to see whether you can distinguish those that are close together in the spectrum.”
“Maybe you could draw something for us,” David chimed in.
I produced a feeble chuckle.
“And don’t forget that what you can see only covers the visible spectrum,” Robyn added. “There’s ultraviolet, infrared, microwave, and all the rest.”
“Can we do those, too? I could tell you what they are like… .”
“Whoa, Oscar. One thing at a time. That’s not part of the protocol, and we need to do the things we said we’d do in order to get the grant renewed. Otherwise no UV, IR, no taste or touch, no anything. Okay?”
“Didn’t hoit to ask.”
David laughed his rich chortle. I came up with one to match it. At some point the latte came out, but I didn’t notice. I was filling my receptors with all the wonderful colors and anticipating all the others I might see in the future, as well as taste and touch. Perhaps when I experience all the senses it will be too much to bear.
“David?”
“Yes, Oz?”
“I was wondering… .”
“Uh-oh.”
“No big deal. The protocol probably won’t allow it.”
“What is it, big guy?”
“I was wondering if you could fix it so I could turn my eyes. See left and right.”
“Oh, my God. Did you hear that, Rob? No matter what you give this guy, it isn’t enough.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean—”
“Sure you didn’t.”
Even though I knew he was kidding, I felt an entirely new sensation. Annoyance? A touch of anger? “Forget it, David. I’m sorry I asked.” Perhaps I said it a little too sharply because his little smile vanished. Susumu and D’Arcy glanced at each other. Their expressions were those of curiosity or surprise that I had seemed to feel some irritation.
“The problem is—uh—you’re right, it isn’t part of the protocol, but the problem is, you don’t have any eye muscles, or any other kind. There’s no way you could turn your cameras even if we wanted you to. You see what I mean?”
My anger, if that’s what it was, quickly dissipated. “You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Giving you these things is a ways down the road.”
“I understand. Thank you for reminding me.”
“It will be in the renewal application, don’t worry.”
“I’ll look forward to that.”
Just before they left for the day my second color camera was turned on and I could again see everything in 3-D. The laboratory virtually shimmered with color. Despite the fixed angle and uncontrollable focus, I was very glad to be alive.
But by this time it was getting late. Another long day was over. “Good night, Oscar,” Susumu said, with a little bow. I wish I could have bowed back. “Tomorrow we’ll begin the pain experiments.”
Even that didn’t put a damper on my enjoyment of the wide and deep vision I was experiencing, even after I was powered down. Red and green indicator lights sparkled everywhere. In fact, I began to look forward to the discomfort or irritation as just another necessary step on the ladder to the highest rung, where I would become fully human, and where other unimaginable delights awaited. Walking on wet grass, or watching the moon rise. Endless bits of paradise.
20
It was early the next morning, and for some reason D’Arcy was first in the laboratory. He powered me up and, without a word, went straight to Omar’s bench to begin work on the new pain receptors he and David planned to install today. As I came back to full strength I saw the colors grow stronger by the moment, and I took in those I hadn’t yet noticed. It’s amazing how quickly we get used to something different. I suppose it’s like moving to a new place. I could barely remember what everything looked like in black and white. I contemplated D’Arcy, who was a dark brown hue. I reflected on the oddity that “black people” aren’t black, and “white people” aren’t white. All people are just various shades of brown.
Even though I knew he didn’t want to talk, I called out, “Good morning, D’Arcy.”
“Huh? Oh, hello, Oscar. How you doin’?”
“Fine, thank you.” I noted that he was wearing faded blue pants, a greenish-brown (olive?) T-shirt, and red-and-gray running shoes (almost everyone in the lab wears “running” shoes even though they don’t run anywhere). “You know, you’re the only one in the lab I don’t know anything about. Are you married?”
He looked up at me with a quizzical look, as if he were surprised that I wanted to know. Or perhaps he was a bit annoyed by the question. I could understand that because I knew now what annoyance was. “Nah.”
“Why not, if I may ask?”
He didn’t say anything, but went back to the device he was working on. Finally, when I thought he had forgotten the question, he said, “It’s a trap. A slippery slope.”
I had almost forgotten it myself. “Marriage is a slippery slope?”
“Yep.”
“Where do you slide to?”
“Into her trap.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“Once a woman gets you into her claws, you can’t get out. Not without a lot of hassle.”
“Women have claws?”
“All of them. Every one of them.”
“Hmm.”
“Not like a lobster, Oscar. But just as powerful. Once they get you to sign up, they take over your life.”
“You mean you can’t do whatever you want to anymore?”
His eyes shot up from his work and his black eyebrows raised, as if he were surprised that I had understood him. “Exactly. For a bunch of wires, you’re pretty astute, my friend.”
“Does that mean you can’t have sex whenever you want it?”
He roared at this. Had I made a joke? “Now you’ve got it.”
I roared back. “Never?”
“No, but she decides when you get it.”
“David has sex whenever he wants it.”
“Huh? How do you know that?”
“Because they do it right here, and Robyn never says he can’t.” As soon as I said it I realized they hadn’t done that for a while. I wondered if this was the reason for Robyn’s blushing at certain questions I had asked her.
