Becoming Human, page 2
3
They worked on me for nine hours today, but I still cannot hear anything. The attempt was a failure. The creators were very disappointed, especially Susumu, who is in charge of this phase of the project. Susumu is originally from Japan, which is an island nation in the continent of Asia. Like many immigrants, he came to the United States when he was a child. Not by himself, of course, but with his parents. He grew up in California, where he excelled in the sciences, and was the first in his family to attend college. He doesn’t say much, which may be an indicator of how intelligent he is. In any case, I have noticed that when Susumu says something, everyone listens.
I, of course, am not disappointed that I cannot yet hear. I don’t even know what that feeling would be like, nor do I have an understanding of any of the other human emotions or capabilities, of which there are a vast number. I know this from all the reading they have given me. They plan to try again next week to adjust my wires and connections and give me the sense of hearing. It may fail again, but my experience indicates that they will get it right sooner or later, as they did with seeing. This does not mean that my creators can do anything they want, merely that they are persistent.
Besides technical things—science and mathematics—they have more recently given me human history to read, as well as studies of their politics and religions and their various arts: painting, music, poetry. I can’t hear the music, of course, but I can process the relationships between the written notes, and understand something of the effect they are supposed to have on the listener. It seems to be related to mathematics.
I have even seen a few films and studied their subtitles. One of their favorites is 2001: A Space Odyssey. And there are many other such movies and books, some suggesting that human beings have made a mess of things and need to evolve to a higher level. This probably will not happen anytime soon. In any case, how would further evolution fix whatever is wrong with them? Maybe the newer version of their species would be worse than the old one, just as humans are far more destructive than the apelike creatures that preceded them.
I can see movies and the like because they have hung a monitor from the ceiling a few meters in front of me, and a programmable player that feeds discs into the computer. I can watch all night or stop watching whenever I get tired, but the player runs the whole time. At present I have nothing to say about what I watch, but that may change when I am able to communicate with my creators.
The reason for filling me with all this information is their very justification for creating me. They want to learn what causes feelings and emotions, and how these can be modified and controlled to solve certain social problems. In fact, their research proposal is titled, “A Method for Creating Artificial Emotions in a Nonhuman Entity and Its Possible Application to the Control of Aberrant Behavior in Sociopathic Individuals.” According to this proposal, the findings they hope to obtain will allow them to understand what neuron pathways are used to create such emotions as fear, joy, anger, empathy, sadness, and the two opposite emotional poles, love and hatred. They have let me read the grant application itself. At the end of it they mention the wider implications of their study, which “may lead to methods to avoid international conflicts, including genocide and war.” An ambitious program, given the long history of these human traits, but perhaps it helped them to secure the funds to do their experiments.
Ultimately, they plan to give me all of these emotions, one by one. They hypothesize that by doing this they can learn to modify one or more of them in mental patients. I have read in the newspapers they give me that part of the human population is opposed to having this kind of information. They say that it crosses a boundary between science and religion, that only God should be permitted to interfere with human emotions, even those that are defective in certain individuals. Of course, the scientists like Henry and the others do not plan to implement their discoveries, only make it possible to do so if that is desired. It is difficult to understand why information—knowledge—itself should be fearsome to some, even when it is never used. This is a dilemma featured in some of their Bibles (one of which I have read), which is symbolized by an apple. But if humans were created with a brain that is capable of learning, it is difficult to understand why their Creator would want to keep it ignorant.
I am a pretty fast reader, by human standards, but they tell me they will improve my capability even further in this regard. There is much to read, and I can barely get through one book each night. Of course they add up and add up. In this regard I am much like you; the human brain is capable of absorbing and digesting endless data, and it keeps absorbing and digesting for at least a century and perhaps it could continue for considerably longer. That is another facet of the present study: to find out how much my memory compartments can retain, and certain variations on this theme, such as whether I can learn several things at once. But that will come later. For now the thrust is to provide me with sight and hearing, and perhaps other senses, and then with emotions. With every step I will be more like a human brain.
But, though I am already much like a brain, I am far less compact. I take up almost a third of the laboratory with all my wires and connectors. The first computers were giants also, and now they can fit in the palms of the creators’ hands. Of course, computers can only make calculations, and a true artificial intelligence such as myself is an entirely different thing. The ultimate goal is to synthesize a functional human brain, and I am their starting point, their first automobile, their first airplane, their first giant computer, their first Dolly. I will become part of their history.
They are giving me my reading for the night. This part is simple: they insert two or three DVDs into their respective players, and I watch the monitor until the first is finished, then the second is programmed to start. In a few hours I will have read Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id and looked at a collection of Leonardo da Vinci paintings and drawings. And, of course, a newspaper, which they give me every night. Tonight it is The Boston Globe. Then I will rest until the lights come on again. When I am hibernating, I review the things I have learned and reorganize the information to make it easier to retrieve. At this stage in my development I do not sleep or dream, but perhaps that will come later.
They have gone now and I am alone, except for the blinking lights and whatever sounds accompany them, sounds I cannot yet hear. They say that when I can do this it will be a big step in my development, that this and the subsequent senses are necessary to assess the meaning of the emotional responses I will have later on.
In the meantime I wait, and try to imagine what these things might be like.
4
The laboratory is a small one, or so the creators tell me. It is located in the basement of the William A. Batty Medical Science Laboratories. To my left are the desks of Susumu and D’Arcy, and to my right those of David and Robyn. On each of these desks stands a laptop computer, and Robyn’s also supports a little potted plant which she waters once a week. Scattered around the laboratory are a variety of instruments and detectors. In the back corner, behind Susumu and D’Arcy, Omar has a cubicle with a bench, and various tools and other devices hang from that and from the wall. It is he who makes all the neurons, and wires them into my backside. He also sweeps the floor and dusts the various instruments when he arrives each morning. Henry, who directs the project even though he is rarely here, doesn’t want the housekeeping people or anyone else in the lab during the night hours. He has no desk or bench at all.
Stationed between the desks are a couple of filing cabinets, and a small refrigerator stands against the wall in front of me along with various other monitors and equipment. Next to the refrigerator is the only door. It has a small window so that no one bangs into anyone else when he or she comes into the room. Occasionally a student peers through the window to see what is going on. Sometimes at night I see the flashlight of the night watchman shining into the lab, though he rarely enters. There is also a shop down the corridor for constructing larger items and for storing electronic and other devices.
There are two humans in the laboratory who are partners on the outside as well. One is David, and the other is Robyn. They are not married, but they reside somewhere together. D’Arcy, Susumu, and Omar are not partners, and they come to the laboratory individually. All of them are here five days of the week, and sometimes one or two return after working hours or on weekends. When David comes on a weekend, so does Robyn.
Yes, I know about marriage. It is when two people become legally united. And I know about the sex part, too, though of course I don’t understand why it is so important for humans, except that it is necessary to produce more of them. But most people engage in it even when they don’t want to have children, or more than they already have. David and Robyn are two of these people.
For some reason it is better if the two partners, whether married or not, share the same religious beliefs. This is a significant consideration for many people. It is ingrained in childhood, and therefore hard to dislodge. Most people don’t like to have these beliefs questioned. It would be like questioning their looks or their personalities, over which they also have little control. Sometimes they escape from these constraints, but usually only to a different kind of religion. The best possible case is when two partners share the “absence” of religion, as do David and Robyn. I have read that this means one less issue to fight about (David was born Jewish and Robyn Christian), but that may have been a joke. I still have a difficult time with jokes.
My education suggests that fighting is as important to many people as is their religion. In fact, it is a big part of their vocabulary. Humans love to fight anything and everything, and it has been going on since the beginning of their time on Earth. Tooth decay, for example, or any serious disease. They make war on drugs and poverty. The newspapers can hardly mention that someone died of cancer without asserting that the victim put up a “courageous battle” against this affliction, as if it were an invading army. Like religion, fighting seems to be a large part of their makeup, something they were taught when they were very young, and is reinforced by films and games of all kinds. Wars are merely the summation of this desire in a large population of humans. Oddly, people often seem happy, and even eager, to send their children off to fight wars anywhere on the planet, and then weep when they don’t come back. It defies logic. But perhaps I will understand these things better when I am given emotions and feelings.
Three of David and Robyn’s grandparents were born in different European countries. Susumu’s parents, as I have said, are from Japan. Omar was born in the U.S., but his progenitors came from Egypt. And D’Arcy is also from the United States, though his ancestors were American slaves born in the continent of Africa. Henry, their leader, is Swedish by birth, but came to the U.S. as a baby with only one parent. But humans are, if nothing else, malleable. Gradually the races and the religions mix and change, mix and change, so that if human life continues on Earth everyone will one day be the same. Maybe then there will be only one race and one religion and no more wars.
I know all these things because humans, at least the ones I see every day, seem to have a need to talk about themselves. Hour after hour, day after day. I think it is something they learned early in their lives. They want other people to know them. This is true about human beings everywhere. I have been given books called novels, and the people in them talk and talk and talk, and mostly the talk is about themselves. This is how they discover things about one another, and avoid certain difficulties. They learn not to call an African-American person like D’Arcy a “Spade,” for example. It is how people find out how to behave in human societies, in addition to the instructions from their parents, and what they learn in schools and elsewhere. In this way they get along better and become more and more alike.
Many humans decry this mixing and changing. They think everyone should maintain what they call their “culture.” But if this leads to wars, which historians tell us often happens, perhaps the cultural things are overrated. It is probably a matter of retaining the familiar. It’s easier to do things you have always done rather than learn something new. Many people, though, think their culture is not only comfortable, but is also the right way, the only way, to act. That is when the trouble starts.
Even within the laboratory there is some cultural friction. Robyn and David don’t like Susumu’s food, and they sometimes laugh about it. Susumu is a “good sport” about this, and he jokes at their food, too, especially their endless need to drink cups of coffee filled with milk and sugar. They all joke about it, though there is sometimes a false smile along with the banter.
No, I can’t yet hear these things. But I am learning to read the expressions on their faces, and sometimes, if they are turned toward me, I can see things that the others cannot. I know their facial expressions very well because I have very little else to look at when they are here. I study them, just as they study me. Perhaps they do not know this.
On nights and weekends I have sometimes seen David and Robyn engage in the sexual activity I have mentioned. It usually begins with a kiss, sometimes just in passing, then the door is locked, and they take off their clothes and put them in a pile on the floor. They lie down on the clothes where they will not be seen through the window in the door. Although they seem to enjoy it, it seems rather boring to me. Very repetitive and predictable. There is some variation, but it proceeds inevitably to the same end. I don’t know whether I will ever understand the pleasure it brings to them, but this is of no concern to me. Unlike human beings, I have not been taught to desire such things. But perhaps one day, when I become human enough, I will have desires like this one.
Tomorrow they will try again to give me hearing… .
5
The big clock on the wall in front of me tells me that it is after eight of clock, and I have counted six days since my creators tried to give me sound. Only Omar is here—he is usually first to arrive in the laboratory. Omar does nothing without being instructed to do so. He is what is called a technical assistant. I have learned that he wanted to go to a medical school, but could not afford it. I think he may resent the others to some degree because of this. He usually powers me up and turns on the lights and some of the machines, as well as dust the instruments and sweep the floors. Omar is the only one in the lab (except for Henry) who doesn’t wink or wave at me. He is of the Islamic religion, and he sometimes puts his forehead and knees on the floor to pray to the God of all things.
Susumu has just arrived, followed closely by David and Robyn. Robyn waves at me and smiles, as does David. Apparently they think I will be encouraged by this greeting. Perhaps they already consider me a “person.” People frequently smile and wave at human infants, too, even though they know that they cannot yet understand what these things mean. But I am no longer a baby. Perhaps I am more like a pre-adolescent.
Here comes our leader, Henry Justasson, M.D., Ph.D. Whenever he signs something he always puts these titles after his name. Perhaps he is called Dr. Dr. Justasson. He is a professor of Neurology, and he teaches classes of students. He also has patients to see, so he does not come to the laboratory very often. But he is here today to consult with the others and to see if there is any progress in the hearing experiment.
Once more they work on me for the whole day. I see them in front of me sometimes; other times they are to the side or in back of me, out of my sight. They add wires, take them away, rearrange them. At midday they eat things, which gives them energy to continue. And of course they drink their lattes (except for Susumu, who drinks only tea, and Omar, who drinks strong black coffee without cow milk or sweeteners). All of these liquids contain drugs to help them stay awake. It is curious, the need for these stimulants. What did people do to stay awake before coffee and tea were discovered?
It is eight minutes after three of clock, and Susumu is in front of me speaking to the others, whom I cannot see. I remember the time very well because at that moment there suddenly came into my consciousness a new sensation, one that I had not experienced before. I knew immediately that it was sound because I was waiting for something like it, something surprising, though I could not have predicted what it would be like. It was really only a broken noise, like the static that comes to a radio that is not tuned to the right wavelength. This is the noise of the microwave radiation permeating the entire universe, I have read. Then it disappeared, and it was quiet again. But I saw Susumu wave a fist in the air, and he knew I had heard it, and that the others were somewhere behind me, also with grins on their faces. Even Henry was smiling when he reappeared, though there was no fist raising.
The static came and went all afternoon. If I had not seen all those musical sheets I might have thought that sound is rather dull and monotonous. But eventually I detected changes in loudness and pitch, and occasionally a clear, definite note, which I later came to realize was a B flat played on a clarinet. Had I been fully human, I suspect it would have been a thrilling experience.
They stayed until almost ten of clock that night, and by that time I could hear a steady sound, whose pitch changed from time to time, from higher to lower frequencies and back again. These were humming noises. Then they turned everything off for the night and left me with more reading material without any sound. This was not surprising and, in any case, I expected them to start again the next morning where they had left off that evening. This time all of them waved at me when they left the laboratory, including Henry.
