The Erased, page 7
But then, I’m out again. There’s only blackness and sometimes music. Strings vibrating…dot da dat dot da dot dot dot da, oh woah woah woahowo…
There’s my mother, who I lost to brain cancer years prior. My father who died overseas when I was 11. Another soldier. They’re there, in the blackness. In the quiet. Dad’s telling me that he’d like to listen to “She Blinded Me with Science.” Mom’s shaking her head and suggesting something from David. “Hang On To Yourself.” Or maybe “The Man Who Sold the World.” Tough to tell, looking back.
And there’s more, but I’d rather not talk about it. I’d rather think about trysts with Kelly in the red velvet room. Or heavily petting Gloria in full uniform. I’d rather think about anything than about the shame I felt in the courtroom. The community service. But most of all, for what the judge required of me.
With my condition, I was offered to a radical research outfit to avoid jail time. It was all about tests and brainscans. AA meetings that I had to hitch rides to with interns. I was forced to reside there in Joshua Tree and stay in a room provided by the researchers – the court didn’t want me leaving the state. They never told me exactly what it was for, but it was basically me being subjected to some kind of experiment. The actual test site was somewhere out in the desert.
Not long ago, I gave the Professor and Ian a theory of mine: that there’s a single defining event from which all personality traits follow. Someone like Ian, I’m sure, he had a perfectly normal childhood. At around 12 or 13, he noticed the opposite sex and became a hopeless romantic. He had a terrible, sickening infatuation from which he began to feel terrible about himself. He eventually became more and more depressed and dark until he met some woman who he perceived could rescue him. The Professor? Well, I’m sure that he was the product of a single parent – probably a mother from the way he overcompensates with guns and macho bravado. I’d also imagine that the single defining event in his life was his father leaving. In my case, it was my father dying. At some point, you have to sit up and realize just how cruel the world can be. That there’s always more to everything. Me, I tried to find a reason. And God, religion, whatever, well that just didn’t cut it.
But Albert Einstein? He had something. He called it determinism. He said something about how God doesn’t just play dice with the universe. And shortly after feeling like my father died for absolutely no reason at all... other than he was fighting against some weirdoes in a foreign land who didn’t want us taking their natural resources…it got me thinking. I wanted it to be something nobler than that. After all, it was my father. My “She Blinded Me with Science” father. If he was to be taken from me prematurely, then it shouldn’t be for nothing. You could call it fate, or pre-destination, or whatever you like.
I remember thinking these kinds of things at his funeral. I even remember the first time I read about something called “Laplace’s Demon.” This was a theory about a consciousness that realizes the past is the cause of the present, and the present is the cause of the future, and that knows all forces that set nature in motion, would be able to provide a single formula for all events – from the profound to the infinitesimal. For this consciousness, nothing would be uncertain and all events would be visible, knowable, and predictable.
Bobby leads me to the Air Force leads me to epilepsy leads me to the researchers. It could not happen any other way.
Tags: Gloria, Kelly, Air Force, epilepsy, Shadows
CONFIDENTIAL
From: Transcript Excerpt, File 2296723415
INTERNAL USE ONLY
The following is a transcript from Home recorder #922. Timestamp 07:02:0039:17:21 to 07:02:0039:18:00. Field notes, Bureau of Enemy Study File 2296723415: Three distinguishable male voices are heard, and they are discussing android designate “Gary” and the identity of a former erased Bureau subject, designated number 24. Certain sections have been reconstructed to the best of our audio transcribers’ abilities. Collusion is to be expected among Bureau inmates and test subjects. In the following transcript, you’ll note that these inmates claim to find some kind of identifiable pattern to their situations. It’s believed that such patterns are not uncommon to the erased, as dissidence tends to be atypical among “the normal” populace; therefore, dissidence tends to breed dissidence.
Male #1: What is it that the android told you, Ian?
Male #3: He keeps referring to me as someone named Kaplan.
Male #2: We discussed this already.
Male #3: Right, so he keeps talking to this guy who was number 24.
Male #2: Was?
Male #3: Was.
Male #1: Tell the Prof what you told me.
Male #2: What’s the problem?
Male #3: The first words out of his mouth to me were “Are you my shadow?”
Male #2: What’s the big deal about that?
Male #1: I used to run in an underground sex club in D.C. called Shadows. There were two levels to the place. It had its own special kind of etiquette. You’d attend the main level and it was like a normal club – music, dancing, drinks, a limited menu. If someone liked you, or you liked someone, you’d extend an invitation to them.
Male #2: “Are you my shadow?”
Male #1: Exactly. Now, why is it that this android knows the invitation etiquette of a sex club from the nation’s capital?
Male #3: That’s not really what matters most.
Male #2: It’s not? I’m afraid I’m not following.
Male #3: It’s my wife. When I met her, one of the first things she said to me was, “Perhaps you are only my shadow. And the shadow can’t be conquered.”
Male #2: So what? You think there’s some connection between the two? The sentences are similar but not exact. Even so, maybe she’d been to D.C. and had quite a time at the place before she met you.
Male #3: No, she was a French ex-patriate. She’d been living in Montreal before I’d met her. We met at Mardi Gras one year. it was one of the very first things she said to me.
Male #1: It’s not as tenuous as you think, Prof. The second level of Shadows was only accessible through a specific password.
Male #2: Let me guess. “The shadow can’t be conquered.”
Male #1: Righty-o. That’s where the real action happened. You go down to the second level with your new partner, you’re assigned a room. There’s red velvet everywhere, giant beds, curtains.
Male #2: I suppose that’s a bit more interesting.
Male #3: It doesn’t stop there.
Male #2: Oh?
Male #1: It led me back to something that happened to me. Maybe a connector, somehow. I’m not exactly sure. When it happened, it was a bit of a medicated blur.
Male #2: That sounds like something I can relate to.
Male #1: I’d been the subject of some kind of study. I’d been nailed after an accident I’d had in southern California. The funny thing about southern California... well, people go there to be transformed. Anyway, I caught this drunk driving beef, but my epilepsy was also somewhat addressed...
Male #2: What kind of accident, Anthony?
Male #1: Doesn’t matter. The judge reprimanded me to the care of a medical research facility outside of Joshua Tree. I attempted suicide there.
Male #2: Suicide?
Male #1: When it happened, I woke up in a haze. My wrists were wrapped in gauze and I was shackled to this, ah, to a stretcher. I remember rambling crazy things. Things about women, about music, events. I’m fairly sure that the lines from the Shadows club had slipped out at some point. Actually, I’m almost positive. If it didn’t happen, then I dreamed it. Anyway, I even remember making a comment, half joking and half delirious, about a musician named Gary Newman (sp?).
Male #2: [inaudible]...so special?
Male #1: [inaudible]... used to sing about androids... [inaudible]
Male #3: Yeah. Tell him, Anthony.
Male #1: I’d been rambling about ...[inaudible]... remember why. I said that they should name a certain model of android “Gary Newman” – not only because he used to sing a lot about androids, but because he’d be a “new man.”
Male #2: Cute, Anthony. Very cute. Are you trying to convince me about fate again or something?
Male #1: I don’t exactly know. I just know it’s important.
Male #3: Professor, I think we can at least agree that we need to pool our intelligence. There’s something more going on here at this compound and I think this is just the beginning of it. We need to stop and think about these things.
Male #3: How’re we supposed to know what’s important and what’s not? Just tell our life stories?
Male #2: It’s usually not that simple... [inaudible]
-- End Transcript --
12. qualia (77)
My background in informatics is supposed to help Gary, but it’s been difficult. I’ve been working on a way to reattach his arm while still scanning through protocols for his mind. Memory continuity. It’s amazing to see the way he processes information. I don’t understand it; he’s like no android I’ve ever seen before. But then again, I’m in a position I’ve never been in before – I’ve never had the honor of trying to repair a damaged android before.
Gary's interesting because of his confusion – confusion is a unique experience for an android. You can see it in his eyes when he speaks and I think it has a great deal to do with the problem of consciousness in androids. Basically, and I can tell you this as a man who works in the field of android informatics, they are walking computers. Sure, they may seem like they have a personality, intelligence, and maybe even a certain level of self-awareness; but scientists have yet to crack the hard problem of consciousness... the "what it's like to be an android?"
Our technology has advanced to the point where we've created these walking, talking machines, whose eyes we can even see through. Still, they move through the world like philosophical zombies. They accumulate quantitative experiences that they can reference, but they can't describe their qualia, nor can they overcome programming. This is to say that we don't understand their quality of life. They may be walking, talking, interactive players in the world, but they have no soul.
But I look in Gary's eyes and wonder.
Maybe it's like this for any technologist who works on these things. It's not our place to understand the soul of an android -- if they're capable of judging the pinkness of a stargazer lily, the enflamed passion of a simple kiss, or a feeling of insignificance when watching the pinhole lights of the night sky.
Take a dog for instance. Some dogs will vacuum anything off the ground. Most people won't stop to think, "hey, how must that taste for him?" Other dogs will taste a piece of food and immediately spit it out because they don't want it, because they've judged it poorly. The android does not have this ability independent of its own programming.
But Gary...
The way he'd speak to me... so peculiar.
How long have I been here? Weeks? Months?
Back in my job at NMAC – it was me, at a terminal. I’d hit buttons in programs. I’d examine the templates that would be used for the android minds. I wasn’t even the one who applied the final firmware tests for NMAC’s own Turing requirements. I can only say it so many times – can only ask the question, ‘why is it me working on this thing?’ When I find myself asking such things and not getting solid answers, there’s this pinch in the back of my skull – like the beginning of brainfreeze. And a chirping noise, like a sudden ringing in my ears.
Didi would be much better at this. She was a registered nurse by trade and could provide bedside manner to the broken robot, not just empty platitudes. Not that Gary really understands the difference. Her career only amplified her maternal instincts. There were those standard moments after we became parents when we’d stand and stare with smiling, gaping faces at our baby Sabrina in her crib – but Didi was the one who knew how to handle her best. There wasn’t a trace of post-partum depression in her, at least from what I could see. She went straight from mother to nurse, day in and day out.
That doesn’t really help me now. Each day, I sit in a room shaded red, lit by emergency lights. This bunker makes little sense and I honestly wonder about its purpose. Are they building something down here? Are there just levels upon levels of worker drones? Do they bring the other erased down here to work?
There’s that pinch again. Brainfreeze.
The situation with Vanessa doesn’t help. When we’re in the same room after lights out, we barely speak. I try to remain cold for the sake of my family, but the others were right. It feels like this is supposed to soothe a need that’s hidden inside, but she’s providing the opposite effect. Just more frustration and anger.
Her mannerisms and quick emotions scream that she’s human. But that doesn’t mean anything – I still haven’t decided which I believe. If only I had the same Turing tests that NMAC used on their androids, I might have a decisive answer. Still wouldn’t account for the possibility of remote use. It’s difficult to believe that someone would spend all their time remoting into the gynoid that sleeps in the bed across from me just for… for what? What purpose would it serve?
If I were Block or the Professor, giving in would be easy. The emotion is intense and palpable, and always pouring off her. She seeks comfort. Yet there’s something distant about her – hidden even beyond the mystery of her origins. Would they invent a background for her if it suited their needs? Is it so easy to create the framework of a human and just fill in the information?
Didi made me happy, and having a baby with her was the most wonderful thing I’ve ever done. Throwing it away would be tragic, just to appease some urge that the people of the O.S.S. or the Bureau of Enemy Study believe I have. The times of suffering away from my family seem to fly by so much faster than the time we spent together. Where’s my beautiful little girl? Her round little face and bright green eyes, flashing with brilliance. Her curly blond hair. Sabrina’s such a smart and amazing little girl. She started talking about six months before she was supposed to – and to the point where her doctor was absolutely amazed at her lexicon.
Gary doesn’t have these problems. Then again, what Gary worries about is beyond me. Who knows what goes on behind those eyes? His arm with wires strewn next to his body, he sits, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. A broken toy.
What does that make me? Some chained Geppetto, required to fix the puppet so he can go back to not telling lies? He’s delusional. But that’s the scary thing – androids aren’t supposed to be delusional, are they?
Tags: Gary, headaches, Vanessa
13. immersion (42)
Total immersion. That’s the only way any of us will get out alive. That’s what they try to teach you in foreign language courses in high school, or linguistics programs in college. Unfortunately, by the time you hit high school, the language center of your brain is already fully formed – it’s far too late to learn a second language properly. They never apply the same principle to a story. They rarely say, ‘Dig yourself in, so far that you are the story.’ No, they’d never say that. Too many lawsuits involved. Instead, they just keep telling the same story over and over again without recording a shred of truth or an iota of decency. They hold linguistics, literature, and journalism all in the same dedicated field – English Studies. And for you youngsters out there, with a Bachelor’s Degree in English, without another degree in education, you will probably never see dime one for all of your sweat and tears. No, your ship has sailed, friends.
I remember waking up one terrible morning with fear lingering just on the edge of consciousness. I remember thinking, ‘Total immersion. That’s the only hope,’ but remembering also that it was quite impossible in today’s world. There’s no help for distraction now.
Say you're a journalist working on a story about pornography in modern culture, in the wake of the proliferation of gynoids and androids. You want to understand how this already fringe culture has been driven underground. Your interest: nobody needs sex dolls anymore. Chances are, there's one cleaning up your house, watching your pets and your kids while you're away.
You try to make contact with a couple of crackpot perverts who run their own smut-peddling speakeasy. You've got to put your ear to the street, find out exactly where such things become available. Then you hear a byword hovering somewhere in the background, as though they're actually speaking of dope dealers instead of smut peddlers. As though these people aren't exactly peddling arousal as they are sedation: a new level of experience, a break with reality.
