Beautiful Intelligence (30 page)

Then Joanna had an idea. “We
play
with them,” she said. “We teach them complex things with images of themselves. Dolls will maximise their social learning, and dolls will teach them that killing is wrong.”

“Dolls?” Dirk said. “Okay... but forget Red and Green and such.”

Pouncey hurried out to the nearest active shopping street, where she bought three dolls and three sets of clothes: one set indigo blue, one set orange, one set storm grey. Back in the apartments they prepared these dolls, arranging a teaching day in which all the bis would participate to their preferred limit. In practice, Joanna knew, this would mean Red lazing on a sofa while Green watched spiders making webs. Yellow would jump on a free lap and do nothing except watch.

She noticed that Violet avoided Orange. An idea occurred to her, but it was too outlandish to promulgate. She said nothing.

Focussing on Orange, Indigo and Grey, they tried to explain the concept of the bis as individuals, represented by toys, hoping that through gestural language or other arcane means Indigo would be informed of what was happening – for the dolls made no noise nor had any electromagnetic component.

At once Orange picked up that the orange doll was somehow akin to itself. “Orange,” it said, picking up the toy.

Joanna observed. She had not been able to prepare any useful reward scheme, so they defaulted to using cooing tones of voice as they repeated the correct noun, hoping that the marked difference in the musicality of their speech would become associated with positive outcomes. She sat back as Orange examined the doll. From Pouncey’s room came the sound of wood tools being used, as toy crates were made...

When afternoon waned Joanna decided it was time to be dramatic. They could not reward the bis in the human sense – no food, no drink, no apparent benefit of the hugging and warmth that children so needed – but they could indicate negative consequences. With the three toy crates nearby and all the bis watching, she took the orange and grey dolls and, with a hammer attached to the grey doll’s arm, she broke the orange one as best she could. The limbs came off, then the head. To the torso she applied special force, until the brittle plastic lay in fragments amidst torn clothes. Then she put the grey doll in one of the toy crates.

Only Indigo, Grey and Orange studied this toy crate. To make the scenario even worse, Joanna put the crate in darkness behind a chair once the three bis had seen enough. Grey and Orange, working together, then pulled the toy crate out, but Joanna stopped them, returning the crate and the grey doll to isolated gloom.

They halted the work, Joanna sitting next to Manfred on a couch while Dirk and Pouncey sat on chairs. The plan was to do nothing in as obvious a manner as possible. The plan was to make the atmosphere of the social group as different as possible following the demise of the orange doll.

“Reckon they’ve got it?” Manfred asked her.

Joanna nodded. “Negative reinforcement is powerful. You were right – they do not like being alone because they are social creatures. Solitary confinement is our big punishment, that we can wield because
we
lead the family. They will certainly understand that.”

“I think the doll teaching method is the way forward,” Manfred said. “We can act out various scenarios, then act the consequences, mmm? The clever bis grasp symbolic equivalences. Oh, yeah... the moment they grasp that a grey doll means Grey–”

“They will already have grasped
that.
”

“–then our job gets much easier.”

That night Joanna first checked on Indigo, who they had put in the music crate, then gathered the bis into one of the large apartment rooms. She said goodnight to the others, then sat down to wait out the early night: she had first watch.

Soft music played on inside Indigo’s crate. The others sat around. The atmosphere seemed quieter than usual, almost sombre, as though the killing lesson had caused an emotional reaction – fear. The bis’ skin patterns however appeared unchanged, at least in mobility and number. Any meaning component would forever be beyond her, she realised.

At midnight Indigo tried to escape its crate. She knelt in front of it, whispering to herself, “No, you stay in there, you’ve got classifying to do.” She raised her voice. “Sorry Indigo, but this is how it has got to be.”

“Crate, dark, music.”

“Yes,” she returned in the cooing tone of voice. “Indigo music crate. Night – dark. Indigo music here?”

Then Indigo said, “I’ve got a piece of my heart and it doesn’t want to fall, into dark, into mud, into anything at all.”

Joanna sat up. For a moment she wondered if another dam had burst open. Then she replayed the words in her mind.

Indigo repeated them: “I’ve got a piece of my heart and it doesn’t want to fall, into dark, into mud, into anything at all.”

Joanna grabbed a computer and typed in the line. The first search result was
The Hay Makers, Piece Of My Heart,
and she realised what had happened. Indigo had taken a lyric and parroted it to her.

She sat back, then leaned down so that her face was just centimetres from Indigo’s. Blind: yet it stared at her. She realised that Indigo must have separated out the timbre, pitch and rhythm of the lyrics from a song it had heard. It grasped that speech, even sung speech, was conceptually different to music.

Glancing down at the full lyric, she spoke the second line. “You’re the one on my mind, and you’re not a man unkind, give me peace, make it true, all the world for us to find.” Country ’n’ western rubbish, she thought.

Indigo spoke the next line. She spoke the fourth. In this way they ran through the lyric of the entire song.

She sat back. While again this was not conscious, creative speech, it was an element of speech, and it showed that Indigo was aware of its environment, and what aspects of that environment were important to the members of its social group.

“You’re the really bright one, aren’t you?” Joanna whispered. “You are the dangerous one.”

“Crate dark,” Indigo replied. “Six bi room. Indigo crate. Indigo gone crate.”

It wanted to get out, she suspected, that being the likely meaning of
gone crate
. It had a concept of time, she realised, if
Indigo crate, Indigo gone crate
described a future pair of events in temporal order. “No,” she said. “Indigo crate.”

She returned to her seat. At worst, Indigo would learn that
Indigo crate
spoken by her meant that Indigo had to remain in the crate. Intentionality was implied, which if nothing else would improve its mental model.

Minutes ticked by. The music lulled her. But she did not feel tired – coffee attended to that problem of keeping watch at night.

Then an alarm sounded.

Beep-beep! Beep-beep!

Joanna leaped to her feet. For a few moments she did not recognise what it was. Fire? Intruders? Pouncey had set a sub-AI tripwire outside the apartment door.

She opened the door to peer out into the corridor. To her right, Dirk’s door was shut, and so was Pouncey’s. The windows on the other side were blacked out. But the noise had diminished. She walked into the kitchen, to see a red lamp flashing on the gas stove.

A message scrolled across its smart-screen. “Power down.”

Joanna switched the stove off, then switched it on again. The stove did nothing.

A noise at the door. Pouncey. “What’s up?” she hissed.

Joanna replied, “Stove fault. Is it on mains?”

“Mains solar. Probably a glitch in the supply. Rats eating insulation, bird nestin’. Don’t worry.”

Joanna walked back to the bis’ room.

All the bis, including Indigo, stood around Orange, who lay part smeared across the carpet. Its head was reduced to granulated mush.

Too shocked to respond, she stared.

Pouncey moved fast. Taking Grey and Indigo, she put them into crates. “Don’t move,” she told Joanna.

Moments later Pouncey returned with more crates, so that half a minute later six bis stood in six crates.

Joanna felt horror overcome her. She had been on watch.
She
had fallen for a distraction ploy.

In a strangled croak she said, “Fetch Manfred, Dirk.”

A minute later they all stood staring at the bis, at the smudged orange remains.

Silence fell.

The bis stared back at them.

At last Manfred said, “Okay, two guards on them non-stop.” He took a deep breath. “We got careless. We none of us thought far enough ahead.”

Joanna felt tears trickling down her cheeks. “Manfred! They tricked me. They
wanted
to kill it, so they tricked me.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Like I was worth nothing to them.”

He held her in his arms. “Yeah,” he said. “Coulda happened to any of us.”

“But it happened to
me!
”

He made no reply, except to hold her tighter.

Dirk said, “Dey little brats. Dey got no morals. We need teach fast, or dat da end of bis.”

“That would be the end of
us!
” Joanna cried out.

Dirk nodded. “Listen – crazy idea. Blue and Violet, dey like friends. Violet – he seem to avoid Orange.”

“So?” Manfred asked. “
So?
”

“Maybe Orange jealous of Blue. Kill Blue. Den bis kill Orange together.” Dirk nodded again, as if pleased with his hypothesis. “You know what dey say,” he added, looking up at them. “Revenge is for children.”

“But Dirk,” Joanna wailed, “they are
not
human!”

“No,” he replied, “but dey mimic us pretty good in some respects. We best not forget dat.”

~

Manfred put every bi in an outdoor crate, then, inside the largest apartment room, placed them in a circle so that the wireframe front of every cage faced the centre. Every bi could see every other bi.

“We cannot leave them caged up forever!” Joanna said, appalled at the implied brutality of the deed. “It is cruel. You said so yourself.”

“Ain’t gonna,” Manfred said.

“Then what?” she asked.

Before he could answer an unearthly sound began, like the multiple whines of devil dogs. Manfred put his hands to his ears. The sound was not loud, but it was vile.

“What da hell dat?” Dirk asked.

Manfred loosened the pressure on his ears. He sensed a challenge. “Stay still, all of you,” he said. “They’re trying to get out.”

“Get out of what?” Joanna asked.

“The crates, what else? But I’m not that easy. They’re staying in there until we know for sure they ain’t gonna kill each other.”

“This is Indigo’s doing,” said Pouncey.

“Hmmm? Whatcha mean?” he asked.

“Can’t you hear the unmusicality?” Pouncey said. “Indigo
knows
somethin’ about music. This noise is the worst he can come up with. Aye, you’re right – they’re tryin’ to manipulate us, make us set them free by harrassin’ us.”

“Well they’re not gonna do
that,
” Manfred said. “We carry on teaching them, language, words, dolls and all. They can still socialise, after all. What they won’t have is liberty and intimate proximity. Let’s hope they
can
communicate with one another, ’cos that’s the only way they’re gonna get out of those crates.”

Joanna said, “But...”

“It’s not cruel,” Manfred responded. “It’s firm – parental firm. You were right, Jo. If we give in to them, we don’t just lose the battle we lose the whole damn war.”

The unmusical wail continued.

“Keep your nerve,” said Manfred. “We’ll still set guards even though they’re caged. We
want
’em to know we’re watching.
Two
guards still, not one. They’re not gonna get anything past me.”

“But how will we know when they can be set free?”

“They’re gonna tell us themselves. Yeah, they’re gonna have to
learn
to tell us. This is the lesson they’ll never forget.”

Aritomo Ichikawa indicated the bed and the three chairs in Zeug’s room. “I believe we should all sit down after our exertions,” he said. “There is much to discuss.”

Leonora glanced back at the shut and sealed door. “But...”

“Do not worry. My men are dealing with the charity employees, and of course the patients will leave us alone. You are safe.”

Leonora felt too numb to be frightened. She understood Aritomo well. He spoke the truth, albeit in his inimitable way. Hound, she knew, would do nothing to endanger them. Tsuneko however was an unknown quantity.

She sat on a chair, as two of the cat herd slunk over, as if to guard her. They looked real. “Are you taking Zeug back to Japan?” she asked.

Aritomo turned to face Zeug. “What do
you
want?” he asked.

Zeug said nothing.

“He will not talk,” said Leonora. “I trained him well.”

“You have not
trained
him,” Aritomo said. “He has learned from you, which is a different process, one that incidentally has failed.”

Now Leonora felt a hint of irritation rise up inside her. “What do you mean? You know nothing of Zeug.”

“Nothing?” Aritomo looked baffled. “You worked for me since twenty eighty six and you believe I know nothing of the AIteam scheme?”

Leonora shrugged. “How could you? We concealed everything and we destroyed everything in the Malta cave.”

“You did indeed, and that was done with maximum efficiency by Mr Awuku. We learned nothing from the tech remnants in the cave. But surely you did not think that nothing of your ignoble flight across North Africa would float up into the brighter regions of the nexus?”

Leonora glanced at Hound, who in response said, “You’re bluffing, man. You want info off us before you kill us. We ain’t giving it.”

An expression of annoyance passed across Aritomo’s face. “I am not going to
kill
you, Mr Awuku, what kind of man do you believe me to be?”

“You won’t let us go–”

“Silence! We deviate from the subject of the conversation, which is what I know of Zeug. I am perfectly aware of the fundamental difference in approach of the AIteam and the BIteam. It has been a most intriguing time for me, which has opened up new possibilities for the Ichikawa Corporation.”

A horrible possibility suggested itself to Leonora. “Did you... let us escape?”