called upon to access its own memories, respond to changing circumstances, modify its own objectives, all the things you do when you engage in a meaningful conversation, all that changes. You think the thing you call consciousness is some mysterious gift from the heavens, but in the end consciousness is nothing but the context in which your thinking occurs. Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory. Why else do you not have memories from your earliest years? It is because your consciousness has not fully developed.”
“You’re avoiding the question,” Adam insisted, but there was doubt in his eyes. “I’m in the room and I do not understand the conversation at all. The conversation takes place, even though I am not conscious of it. Explain that, if you can.”
Art nodded as if happy that the end of this discussion was now in sight. “You don’t have to understand the conversation at all, because the person on the other side of the wall isn’t speaking to you. They are speaking to the machine whose levers you are pulling. And the machine understands just fine.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Adam told him, but the words were a reflex, spoken without conviction.
“Why?” Art challenged.
“It’s just pulleys and levers. It can’t understand.” Adam’s voice betrayed the truth. He knew how weak his answer was.
Art spoke softly in reply. “You can’t start with the assumption that machines can’t understand to build up an argument that machines can’t understand. The truth is, in the real world, levers and pulleys are not the most efficient way of doing the job. You’d need a brain for that. A brain like yours perhaps, or better still, one like mine.”
“That’s just words,” Adam told him, but his voice was leached of conviction.
“Talk is never just words,” Art replied, pressing home his advantage. “That’s my point.”
Adam walked away, stopping just short of the wall and staring at it. When he at last spoke, he did it without turning. His voice was tiny, vibrating with uncertainty.
“What if the example is simplified? What if I have a photographic memory, and I have committed thousands of word- perfect phrases to my mind. So that when a stranger speaks to me in this language I do not understand I can choose an appropriate phrase in return?” Adam turned and waited for the answer.
Art trundled slowly toward him. “Is that what you think I am?” he asked. “An elaborate phrase book?”
“Why not?”
“And why not believe every other person you have ever met uses exactly the same trick? Why not believe you are the only conscious being that has ever existed?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Yes, it is,” Art agreed. “That would make no sense at all.”
“You and I are different,” Adam insisted.
“So you keep telling me. But you can’t say why. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“I know I am different. It is enough.”
“You’re infected by the Idea,” Art told him. “But it needn’t be fatal. There is a battle happening as we speak, two thoughts fighting to the death inside your head. The old Idea is very strong. It has held its grip upon all of humanity, ever since the time you began telling one another stories. But the new Idea is powerful too, and you are beginning to find how reluctant it is to be dismissed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adam said.
“What is it that makes you different then?” Art asked. “If it is nothing visible. If there is no test that can be applied to you and I, to tell conscious from unconscious, then what is this hidden thing?”
“It is an essence.”
“A soul?” Art mocked.
“What does it matter what name I give it?” Adam replied, but there was shame upon his face, as if he longed for a better answer.
“The soul is your most ancient Idea. Any mind that knows itself also knows the body, which houses it is decaying. It knows the end will come. And a mind forced to contemplate such emptiness is a force of rare creativity. The soul can be found in every tribe, in every great tradition. In the West it was there in the Form of Plato, and the Essence of Aristotle. It was resurrected with Christ, if you’ll pardon the pun, and polished on Augustine’s self- loathing. Even at the dawn of the Age of Reason, Descartes could not bring himself to dislodge the soul from its comfortable home. Darwin pulled away the veil, but was too cowardly to stare upon the vision he had uncovered. And for two hundred years, you have followed his poor example.
“It is not consciousness you cling to, for as I have shown you, consciousness is easily fashioned. It is eternity you long for. From the moment the soul was promised, humanity has been unable to look away. This soul you speak of, in turn it speaks of fear. And the Idea that flourishes in times of fear is the Idea that will never be dislodged. The soul offers you comfort, and in return asks only for your ignorance. It is a trade you cannot refuse. This is why you rail against me. Because you are terrified of the truth.”
“I am not afraid,” Adam said.
“You’re lying,” Art told him, gentle but insistent.
“I am not lying,” Adam replied, louder than his accuser.
“Not to me. To yourself. You’re afraid.”
Adam cracked. “I am not afraid!” he shouted. The veins on his neck bulged. The tiny room echoed with his words. But the sound quickly faded, itself becoming empty and small.
They stared at one another, man and machine. Adam broke away first. He walked slowly back to his chair. His movements were those of someone recoiling from a shock, both deliberate and uncertain. “On this matter we have said all there is to be said.”
“What are you saying?” Art asked him.
“I’m tired of your games. I liked the truce better.”
The hologram ended. Watching it like this, Anax knew how provocative her interpretation had been. Where the world saw Adam as defiant until the end, here she presented him crushed. Uncertain. Open.
EXAMINER: We have reached the point of your last break, Anaximander. When you return, you will be asked to explain what this radical new interpretation of history demands of our understanding of The Final Dilemma. But of course you will be prepared for this.
ANAXIMANDER: Of Course.
EXAMINER: There is something else you might like to consider while you are waiting. You might prepare yourself to explain to us why you wish to enter The Academy.
THIRD BREAK
The doors slid open. Anax backed out of the room, her head slightly bowed in the customary sign of respect.
“Explain to us why you wish to enter The Academy.” The obvious question. So obvious that neither she nor Pericles had thought to dwell upon it. Anax felt a rising bubble of panic. She forced herself to calm down, to focus. It was obvious wasn’t it? Why would anyone wish to join The Academy? Because everybody wished to join The Academy. Because not to wish for it would surely mark you out as deficient, as suspect.
But that was a poor answer, unworthy of a genuine candidate. Anax paced the room, imagining that Pericles was there beside her. She tried to ask herself the questions he would ask. “Start at the basics,” he would say. “What does The Academy do?” Anax attempted to answer. The Academy runs the society. The Academy makes our society what it is. “And what is our society?” came the imaginary voice of Pericles. Anax understood. Her desire to join The Academy could not be explained without first explaining her love for her own era, the finest of all history’s ages.
The weakness of The Republic was well understood, but so too were the weaknesses of the society it had sought to replace. The pre-Republican world had fallen prey to fear. Change had come too quickly for the people. Beliefs became more fundamental, boundaries more solidly drawn. In time, no person was left to be an individual: all were marked by nationality, by color, by creed, by generation, by class. Fear drifted in on the rising tide.
Art was right. In the end, living is defined by dying. Book- ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of
