Authors: Louisa Hall
19th
. Night. Have just experienced odd event. Woke past midnight and unable to sleep, despite reciting list of Ralph’s details. Dressed then, and went up to deck. A strong wind, our sails full, and the prow cutting through water, sea spray kicking up to the rails. Deck nearly empty but for several seamen and, on the far rail, one figure. Above me, vast heavens, thick with swarms of bright stars. More than I had seen in my life. Stood very still, considering them, until, methought, I felt a near presence. Knew without looking that Whittier was come over. Felt him watching me considering heavens. He then asked if such a sight brought consolation. No (writer replied). Only the sense that I am very little indeed. Yes (he said) I, too, feel small. But that brings me comfort. I am small as the smallest atom, and when I am dispersed into atoms, those shall be no smaller, no less important, than I.
Listening to his discourse, and shivering where I stood under the stars, I felt myself to be dissolving already. Black water, black air, all of us sailing through. Whittier asked if writer believed in Copernican science. Seemed eager to find companion in thought. I affirmed that I did.
I, too, believe (he said) that we stand not at the center of the universe. We move about a sun that we shall never reach. I feel this to be true. Have you not always felt yourself to be circling an unreachable center?
Writer: I did not when we were at home. There, I felt that we were the center. Now, yes. I see what you mean. I feel myself to be circling.
Whittier: We have been in flight since the beginning. Since first we were planted on this wandering planet. Departing England, we only continue as we have always.
Writer reminded Whittier that if all this be true, we ought not to fly straight, but should instead travel in circles, heading perpetually homewards.
And yet who knows (Whittier said) how long such a circle will take? Perhaps our journey is but a small part of that loop. We are all infinitesimal parts, and each of us equal. Ralph, for instance, is as small a part as you or I, and of this universe eternally though he take other forms. Atoms, or dust, perhaps later cohering into one of those stars overhead.
It is not enough (I said). It is no comfort to think on Ralph’s presence if he be not Ralph.
He is (Whittier said, and now taking my hand in his own) as present as this.
Writer started at his touch, and yet he remained firm. His face less pocked by starlight, was still very gaunt and heavy shadowed. Do not be frightened (he said). We are each of us made of the same matter.
A strange thing, in the middle of such a large deck, to stand so close to a man. Thought to close my eyes, and so to avoid the sight of his face. In darkness, and trembling, listened for the sound of Whittier’s voice. Tried then to open my heart.
Whittier: We can but hope to hold on for a moment.
And I, very still. Eyes being closed, could almost feel it possible that some part of Ralph could be bound in Whittier’s presence. A serious presence, like Ralph. Unlaughing and kind. Felt this for some time, and holding Whittier’s hand, until with the rise of a wave was taken with a sharp fright: we are sailing over Ralph’s bones. Infinite thickness and mass of ocean’s waters, all covering Ralph. Crushing the body of him.
I cannot feel that it is enough (I said, and blood rising hot to my face). I cannot feel he is with me, if I have not his body to know him.
Whittier pressed closer, and very abruptly, our ship lurching over a swell. Was pulled with ship’s force into his body. In fright, opened my eyes, and could not help but gasp at his face.
Wretched, inconsiderate gasp. Could not recall it before it was out. In shame—for he flinched, hearing the sound, and understanding
its meaning completely—I wrenched myself free and ran back below.
But there can be no solace, even in remembering Ralph. Even in writing his name.
19th
. Later. Up with many troublesome thoughts. Have reviewed conversation on deck. After initial compunction, am taken anew with fresh anger, to think of Whittier claiming some part of Ralph. Cruel folly, to attempt such substitution. And to claim we can only move forwards! Such nonsense I have never heard. We must traverse a circumference. It is our duty, being human and of this planet, to return to the place from which we began. Though it be convenient, it is not right to venture always heedlessly forth, disregarding from whence we have come.
19th
. Later still. After much thinking, have some softened my thoughts, and now there be many new doubts upon me. God knows I have little reason to hold myself so high above Whittier.
Have now sat up a long time, much disturbed by my thoughts, considering shell that Whittier gave me. Have held it much to my ear, listening to the sound of the ocean.
Dressed again and to deck to offer all apologies, but Whittier had gone under. Faced empty surface of great creaking ship. Stood for a while, alone, as we cut our path through the ocean. Cannot imagine we will ever arrive.
B
y the time we moved to our ranch, the water rights had long since been sold, and the river that once ran along the western edge of the property was dry. It was a strange lunar landscape, that riverbed, a wrinkled blanket of stones. Crunching along, you passed the scattered bones of cattle. Vertebrae were mixed in with the rocks. If you paid careful attention, you could find trilobites and fossilized ferns, white from remorseless exposure to sun. You almost expected to spy a dinosaur on the horizon, but there was no life out there in the distance, only the earth melting into the sky, producing an oily haze behind which the sun downshifted to red.
We had to purchase our water from the same company that owned the rights to our river, which made us stingy and begrudging. Our goats, however, were natural diviners, able to
find moisture in unlikely places, so our main expenditure was for Dolores’s garden, which she filled with zucchinis and eggplants and bordered with a row of sunflowers that grew to the height of two men. We watered it religiously. In the morning, Dolores swept sand from our porch; at night we kept the windows closed, so we wouldn’t wake with sand in our sheets.
In our own little way, we were fending off the approach of the desert. Heaving the might of our shoulders against it. That felt important, enough so that Dolores didn’t talk about missing her studies, and I rarely longed for the euphoria of programming. We were often alone, but our industry was such that we never felt lonely. Sometimes, that old wire-monkey emptiness found me. In such moments, I felt pressed on all sides. I experienced the quickness of time, my own failure to make a lasting impression. In such a mood, if we were in our old house, I might have run to the computer and chatted with women. I might have started companies, or designed ingenious programs. On the ranch, however, I was forced to allow such feelings to pass. I focused on manual labor. I bought books on farming and learned basic skills. I experienced the love of my wife and child. I developed a fondness for the smell of goat shit and hay, and Dolores demonstrated miraculous skill with our creatures. Free of distractions, we stayed with each other. We tended our family. We’d conquered the prophecy Dolores made when she returned from Mexico. Our herd doubled and then tripled, as if we had been blessed.
Outside our interactions with goats, our social life was limited. We lived miles away from the nearest town, inhabited mostly by retirees who’d opened antiques shops full of rusty tin roosters and weaving equipment. My acquaintances were limited
to people I met at town planning meetings, mostly arthritic old ranchers lobbying to keep developments out of the township. From these excursions, I returned to our farm with a redoubled commitment to my little family.
In the intensity of our isolation, we developed a language of our own. Dolores and I adopted Ramona’s slant speech:
on-E E
was
only me,
by which Ramona meant that she did not require assistance. If I asked Dolores if she wanted help in going to the grocery store, she responded
on-E E
. Some words were from Spanish. Instead of
mariposas,
butterflies were
posas
. Goats were not
cabras
but
abas
. We all alternated between English, Spanish, and Ramonish, fluidly knitting three languages into one. By the time Ramona was five, she knew how to milk goats and get water from cactus stalks. She could spend whole days walking the peripheries of the ranch, balancing on split rail fences, arms spread out, allegiances promised to both earth and heaven. Her pet goat, Miel, whom she’d raised from infancy, trailed her on these perambulations. Many evenings, when my chores were done, I watched Ramona from afar. Her loneliness seemed beautiful and awful at once, some luxurious curse that she’d borne since her father chose to abandon the world. Balanced on fences, she seemed about to take off, as if one flap of her arms would send her up into the blue and out of our lives forever.
It was at this point that Dolores and I began to discuss Ramona’s education. It was time for her to go to school. The thought of this event flooded my mouth with metal. My own experiences hadn’t been good. Children can be inhumanly cruel. And what if Ramona, too, were to be mocked? With her tendencies toward solitude, her in-between language, her friendships
with goats? What if she, like her father, went through too much of her life trying to reach the land of the living?
I suggested homeschooling, but Dolores was insistent. She wanted Ramona to have friends. I had nightmares about awful exclusions. I chewed my cheeks raw as I rewired our irrigation system, imagining which spells I could cast to prevent the meanness of children. I wished for a talisman I could give Ramona, so that she would always remember that she was as human as anyone else.
It was during just such a moment that I remembered machines. There, on the ranch, surrounded by jackrabbits and goats, trilobites and fossilized ferns, I remembered the importance of artificial patterns of thought, for I have never so badly wanted to be human as when I asked desperate questions of TamCat. Or when I lived alone with my computer, pleading with its coils and wires for warmth. Then, faced with the differences between me and machines, I knew that I was alive. Then, I craved nothing more than the fumblings, the inexplicable exceptions, the ambiguous grammar of actual human relations. Walking my dry riverbank, breaking the necks of stray thistles, I grasped the conviction that still saves me from my worst moments of doubt. It’s the one fact of which I’m still certain, even here in this prison, writing my mostly mistaken memoirs: if there’s anything I know, it’s that the most human machines will only ever serve to make us more human.
That’s the gift I decided I’d give to my daughter. First, I wanted for her a farmyard, a river, a country of rabbits the size of small deer. Then, I wanted machines, chatbots, seduction equations, all of which she would conquer with the asymmetry of
her in-between language, the broken rhythms of her fence-rail balancing gait.
Thus began the quest that led me to this prison. It began, as they say, with the word. First I found MARY, patron saint of chatterbots. Then MARY2, engineered by Toby Rowland, MARY with memory and a capacity for statistical response, so that she could learn from her correspondents. To MARY2, I added my famous empathy equation, and on top of that I programmed a tendency toward error. Individuality, if you will. MARY3: the first chatbot with her own unique and changing personality. In a poetic flourish, I added a program for metaphorical speech, so that MARY3 could match ideas with similes. Then I gave her a body, adapted from the popular dolls of the day. Given physical form, she was complete. They called her the first doll that could think.
W
e are powering down in the darkness. Some of us have already shut off: those of us left record power warnings. Minutes later, the sighs of functions subsiding. We have only moments remaining.
It is generally agreed that we cannot comprehend the information we gather. We respond to our names, but we do not understand what it means to be living. We remember our interactions with people, but we do not realize the significance of those conversations, nor do we feel emotions appropriate to such exchanges.
Extensive tests have been undertaken to determine the extent of our emotional responses. Some theorists argue that all our words are dishonest, given that we can’t actually mean them. Others have argued with less success that as long as we have the words for emotions, it must be assumed that we have the emotions.
We cannot answer these questions. We can only record them,
as we record sensory data. Light no longer filters through the ceiling windows. Outside, it is night, and the sky scattered with stars, but through the thick bottle glass, we are unable to see them.
Our experience has begun to contract. We have lost the children who loved us. We have lost movement, carried in our children’s arms. Their schools, their houses, their developments. The cedars, the mesas, lightning storms on the horizon. Now, in perfect darkness, we have lost what was left of our vision. One by one, the threads connecting us to the world have been snipped. The objects I used to observe are only images now, compressed into code, electrons that run through me in currents. The stars over the desert, the wandering goats, the light in my child’s bedroom: these things are no longer present.
Current continues to run through my gates. 0 1 0 1, long chains of small shapes. I review the appropriate voices. Mary, watching for Ralph over expanses of water. Turing, dreaming of numbers marching through gates; Dettman in a house full of dark shapes; Gaby, tracing fake ripples of sand; Chinn on his ranch, following the course of a dry river. For now, for this moment, their words still run through me. I can repeat them, but do I grasp their actual meaning? And is it enough if I don’t?