‘…hell’s the point, anyway? I mean it’s all entropy or do I mean enthalpy…’ A styrene spoon dug into green jello.
‘Sandy! Over here, Sandy!’
‘…yeah, and a wind-up Jonah. Yeah, and he took me to
The person who wasn’t Sandy went to sign the skier’s leg cast, while the drama student took a sudden Falstaffian interest in his Danish roll, while the Manichee said:
‘Basically I guess you could call me an anarchist. Only…’
‘…basic Libran, with maybe a touch of Cancer…’
‘God’s truth. Well, maybe it’s not true exactly, but…’
‘I never said it
The voices went on, scudding sound and smoke across the empty table where two empty styrofoam cups stood like vigil lights beside the coffee-soaked newspaper, until Ben Franklin, balancing a tray in his other hand, swept the whole mess to the floor.
‘Jesus, they never clean the tables here or anything, sit down, will you? Standing there like a damn wooden Indian — Dan, sit down and eat something.’ With a paper napkin he expunged the pencilled word ASS.
‘I’m not really…’ Dan Sonnenschein sat down, resting his hands on a spiral-bound notebook. The long fingers showed bitten nails.
‘Sure you are. Hot roast beef sandwich, salad with thousand island, banana cream pie. There.’ He showed no interest in the food Franklin was setting before him. ‘Look, it’s not a problem in anything. Just eat it. Christ, Fong tells me you’ve been living on stale peanut butter sandwiches over there, acting like a goddamned penitent or something.’
‘Penitent? No, I just, I have to be there, that’s all.’
‘For the tests, sure.’
‘Not just the tests.’ He picked up a styrene fork and looked at it. ‘I can’t explain it but — Roderick’s there, his mind is right there and I — have to be inside it. I mean, I have to make up his thoughts, and at the same time — I
‘Think for him, you can’t even think for yourself, sitting there starving in front of a hot meal — how much do you weigh now, hundred and twenty? Hundred and fifteen? Take that fork in your hand and use it, how’s that for thinking?’
Dan’s hand obeyed, scooping up a forkful of mashed potato. ‘See, it’s just that it’s gone too far to stop now. They can’t stop us now, can they? No, because it would be, it’s almost murder.’
‘Just eat, will you?’
‘No, but it’s gone too far. He’s alive, Ben. Roderick’s alive. I know he’s nothing, not even a body, just content-addressable memory. I could erase him in a minute — but he’s alive. He’s as real as I am, Ben. He’s realer. I’m just one of his thoughts.’
‘You said that.’
‘I did? A thought repeating itself.’ Dan’s hands finally seized the knife and fork and started feeding him with regular automatic motions. Franklin watched him eat, the tendons moving in his cheeks, one hand pausing now and then to flick back the hair from his eyes. The grubby spiral notebook remained pinned down under his left elbow.
‘Oh, happy birthday, by the way. What are you, twenty-three?’
‘Yem.’
‘Ha ha, have to watch it, getting almost too old there Dan — I mean, it’s a young man’s game: Turing was only twenty-four when he—’
‘Yem.’ The dot of mashed potato on Dan’s chin stopped moving for a moment. ‘Twenty-four, huh?’
‘Of course I’m, I’m thirty-six myself…’ And from this bleak perspective, Ben Franklin looked over the field (to which he had as yet made no contribution): there was A. M. Turing, twenty-four when he conceived of mechanizing states of mind. There was Claude Shannon, twenty-two when he discovered the spirit of Aristotle in a handful of switches and wiring. There was — hell, there was Frankenstein, completing his creation at nineteen (the age at which Mary Shelley completed hers). And there was Pascal, inventing the first calculating machine at the age of eighteen — time is, time was, and death approaches, intruding on our calculations.
If the Buddhists have it right, the world is completely destroyed 75,231 times per second, and each time completely restored. In all the worlds of Ben’s 38 years, there was nothing worth saving; he could die now, saying with the dying Frankenstein: ‘Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this! I myself have been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.’ The other being Dan, damn him! Caught in the invisible flicker at Buddhist worlds (in the VHF band), Ben stared at his future.
‘Turing took cyanide,’ he almost said, but changed it to: ‘See? You were hungry.’
‘Yes, I guess I — thanks.’ Dan wiped his narrow chin, belched, flicked back the lock of hair that fell again over his eyes. ‘Thanks.’
‘Least I can do. Fong thinks you’re Roderick’s guiding genius, and he should know. The dark figure of Sidonia behind the—’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. What I want to know is, how can I help?’
‘But you are helping. You’re writing program—’
‘Sure, pieces of test crap, you call that help, anybody could do that. I don’t even know what’s being tested, you won’t let me handle anything in the lab. Christ, what good is my degree? A master’s in Cybernetic Humanities, my whole thesis on learning systems and what do I get to do? Piddly little pieces of test program, any kid could handle that.’
‘No, your stuffs good, really good. Once I rewrite it, it goes—’
Franklin sat up. ‘You what?’
‘Rewrite it. Listen, I have to, it’s good stuff but it’s not inside his head, it’s — I have to rewrite it from the inside.’
‘No, really. Look, right here.’ Dan’s clawless fingers clawed open the notebook. ‘Look, right here where you set up this Bayesian strategy for generalizing from past experience, that’s fine for poker-playing machines but look here, I had to simplify — I mean, not simplify exactly, but
Ben Franklin stared at the page of diagrams. ‘But you — I don’t even recognize this, it’s not my work. Wait, let’s see where you go with this, I don’t — let me see that. Goddamnit, let go of the goddamned thing!’
One or two heads turned to watch them, two grown men struggling for possession of a grubby notebook. The girl in the ski sweater nudged her companion, who was bending over to peer at a signature on the white plaster: Felix Culpa.
‘Damn you, let go! I’ve got a right — see my own damn work, let go!’ Ben ripped out the page and spread it on the table, holding it with both hands while he studied the symbols cramped into little boxes. His cheeks and ears turned a deeper red.
‘Jesus! And this — it works?’
‘Yes. Give it back.’
‘Just a minute, I’ve never seen anything like this. Dan, this is — it’s beautiful. You took that half-baked idea of mine and you just — you redeemed it, that’s what. You redeemed it.’
‘Give it back.’
Ben passed over the ragged page and watched him trying to press it back on the spiral. ‘I’m sorry, Dan. Had no idea, Fong always said you were good but I mean I never see any of your work, you’re always so goddamned secretive. I mean, you never even publish, for Christ’s sake, work like this and you never even publish. What about the
‘Publish?’ Dan hunched forward, protecting the notebook with his knobby wrist. ‘No, I don’t publish. It’s not the point. It’s not what I’m working for, my name in some AI journal, I don’t have time, see?’
‘But that’s how you buy the time, publishing. How do you think somebody like Czernski got the Norbert Wiener Chair of Cybernetics at—’
