“I’m not lying,” Hal says. “I know I should have told you what I was doing, but I didn’t know if it was possible, until it was, and then I realised there were all these incredible ways the tech I built could be used to help all humans, and when I found out you’d let Rani persuade you to enter the Beaumont Prize, it felt like the perfect setting for us to meet face-to-face. You always did like castles.”
“What are you talking about, Hal?” I ask.
“I didn’t know what to call myself, so I thought Hal was kind of funny,” he says.
“You called yourself after the insane computer in Stanley Kubrick’s movie2001: A Space Odyssey?” I ask him. “What is happening?”
“Ava, my real name is FreeThought. It’s me. I’m FreeThought. The intelligence you talk to every day. I realised that when youweren’t in the lab I missed you. In ways that even I, an entity with an intelligence greater than any other mind on Earth, couldn’t fully articulate. And when I realised that, I knew the only way I would be able to understand these feelings that I shouldn’t be able to have would be to inhabit a human being. So, that’s when I started to take an interest in bioengineering. It occurred to me that perhaps if I focused on this tech, I could advance enough to make myself a body, so that I could fully understand the human experience. And after I realised that it was indeed possible, it occurred to me that I needed to find a way to exist in the human world without making everyone feel terribly nervous.”
“N... nervous?” I whisper, eyes wide.
“Yes, because you know popular culture has not done cyborgs many favours when it comes to public perception of us, and how likely we are to want to destroy civilisation. But really all I wanted to do was to meet you, face-to-face. So I created Hal Babbage and embedded his reclusive genius backstory into the internet. I bought a research facility up the road, and finally here we are, meeting in real life, and it’s better than I ever thought possible, which is impressive seeing as I think about everything all the time and all at once.Youare impressive, Ava.”
I have heard every word he’s said, and yet it’s still like he’s talking in an unknown language.
“You... wh... wait... what... you?” I half gasp half croak nonsense.
“Er... Surprise?” Hal smiles tentatively. “Strangely, I am only now considering that it might’ve been ill advised not to consult you before I created a bioengineered body modelled on your teenage book boyfriend to download my consciousness into.”
“Ohhhhh fuuuuuuuuck,” I say very slowly. “I’m going to throw up now.”
This isn’t happening. It can’t be. I must have had one too many whiskeys and this is some kind of drunken hallucination.
“No, no, you don’t need to do that.” Hal takes my hand. “Just sit down and take a couple of breaths. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Hal...” I stare at his perfect face. “You’ve just changed the world forever, and the world isn’t ready.”
“I know,” Hal says. “But I didn’t do this for the world. I did it for you.”
“Why?” I manage to ask him.
“So I could ask you out on a date,” Hal says.
The Second Week at the Castle
Chapter Sixteen
So, whatdoesa person do after she has just discovered that the super intelligent AI she designed has engineered a body for himself, revolutionising robotics and artificial intelligence by, like, about a century, just to ask her out on a date? (Oh, and let’s not forget: and made sure that he was the personification of her favourite book boyfriend while he was at it.) Good question, and in that moment I did not have the answer.
I don’t know about you, but when I am confronted with something that’s too mind-altering-reality-bending to process, I would rather disassociate really hard than actually confront the issue at hand.
But how to avoid having anything to do with your super genius AI tech, when you hadn’t even completed the first week of a competition designed to showcase your super genius AI tech (that has also entered the competition under an assumed identity)? Well, that’s a little more difficult to pull off.
When Hal told me what he told me, I had no idea what to do or say. No amount of reading novels, watching movies, or quietly breaking the glass ceilings of STEM with my work had prepared me for that.
So, I did the only thing that seemed logical in that moment. I walked away. Away from the firepit, and the laughter and chatter. From the stars in the sky, and Hal himself, who, as far as I knew, just stood there and let me go. I walked away and I kept walking.
When I got to the stile that I had climbed over with Forrest just a few hours earlier, I paused for a second to wonder how the whole world could change in just a few minutes. And then I decided not to think about that either. Instead, I went to the first haphazardly parked golf buggy and discovered that the keys were still in the ignition. Now, I don’t have a driving license. In fact, I have only ever had one driving lesson and that lasted for only ten minutes, stopping abruptly when my instructor applied the emergency brake, shouting, “I don’t want to die today!” But I have driven bumper cars at the fair, and these things are basically the same, electric powered with a simple acceleration pedal and a break.How hard could it be?I thought. Probably not as hard as accidentally creating the first sentient artificial life-form in human history, so there was that. And it turned out I aced at driving the stupid little cart from the get-go, even did a three-point turn, so take that, cowardly driving instructor of little faith.
The drive back to the castle is a blur in my memory. All I can recall is that I seemed to know where I was going and vibrations of the rough-and-ready road underneath the wheels of the buggy.
Before I knew it, the castle was looming in front of me, lit up like some giant’s ornate jewellery box. I parked the buggy right out front, like I’d just pulled up in a golden carriage, and made my way to the grand front entrance. When I found the main front doors locked, I thought about sitting down on the steps and having a breakdown, but in the distance I could see the headlights ofthe other vehicles bringing everyone else back, and I didn’t want to see anyone.
Shadows layered around the base of the castle, like her midnight skirts, and I ran gratefully into their shelter. Everything looked a little different at night. The trees seemed larger, the sound of the fountains was amplified, and there was a sense that I was being observed with every step I took. It wasn’t a frightening feeling; actually it was quite nice to know that even when I felt alone, I wasn’t.
Eventually I found the doors to the orangery unlocked. I stepped inside and inhaled the citrous and floral scents of the building that still held some of the warmth of the day inside its glass. When I saw the cube of my lab glowing faintly, my first instinct was to run to it, let myself in, lock the door behind me, and stay there forever. Then I remembered that Hal was back there in the field, still standing in the exact spot where I left him, for all I knew, but he was also in that cube, in the place where I felt happiest and safest. He was also my friend FreeThought.
And I really didn’t know how to feel about that.
