“Hello!” A chipper little girl’s voice interrupts the moment, and I glance down to see the tousled head and bright inquisitive eyes of Forrest’s daughter. “I’m Artemisia, I’m named after a woman artist from the Renaissance. My daddy says you are a very clever lady. I’m very clever too. We can be friends.”
Artie offers me her hand. I take it. She has a firm handshake.
“You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen,” Artie tells Rani. “Apart from my mommy, and she’s dead.”
“Artie.” Forrest arrives, a little flustered. “I’ve told you not to tell everyone about Mom until you’ve got to know them a bit.”
“Nonsense,” Rani says, also shaking Artie’s hand. “This child has extremely good taste and good manners. Twelve out of ten, five stars.”
“You can’t have twelve out of ten!” Artie laughs, her giggles delightfully loud.
“Right, young lady,” Forrest says. “Come on back to your seat. Don’t bother Ava.”
“It’s no bother,” I say. “I’m always pleased to meet another clever lady.”
“Good luck, Ava,” Forrest says. To my surprise, I notice he’s blushing. “I might be your nemesis, but just so you know, you aren’t mine.”
He says that now, but little does he know that I have accidentally invented the very thing that Forrest fears most about AI: the perfect replacement for humans.
Chapter Twenty-One
When I get to the seat that Hal has saved for me between Rani and him, I’m still pulsing with adrenaline. It could not have gone better. Between us, Hal and I showed everyone there exactly how AI could be a force for good—not to steal from humans but to support them, to give them a more equitable and fair life. I’m not normally a competitive person, but I did get some satisfaction from receiving my own standing ovation once the presentation concluded, and it hadn’t even been Hal or Rani who started it off—I checked.
Even the horde of kids at the back of the hall were whooping and whistling like I was Taylor Swift and not some geeky ginger nut. For the first time in my life I feel like I might even be bordering on cool. Not literally cool, but cool adjacent anyway.
Now we are going straight into Forrest’s presentation and I notice how he runs up the central aisle and leaps onto the stage. The teens fall silent as they wait. And when Forrest starts to clap, they start to clap, in four-four-two rhythm as they file down the centre aisle and the sides of the chairs, literally waltzing to the front. And as they move, they start to recite a poem with one voice.
If you believe the children are the future
You might want to take a look at us now
You treat us like we’re some alien creature
But we’re your tomorrow, right here, right now.
The chant goes on until all the kids are packed onto the stage, and I have to admit it is effective, even if they have rhymed “now” with “now.” Just to see them working so well together and looking so proud gives me goosebumps. Forrest has really given these kids something in the last week, he’s given them a sense of self, and for some of them it might be the first time ever.
Everyone cheers and whoops as the kids finish, no one more than Artie, who stands on her chair, jumping up and down with enthusiasm. Then most of the kids file quietly to the back of the room, as Forrest talks about what he wants to achieve with his work. He’s passionate and engaging, and sexy as hell.
It’s very annoying. No one wants a nemesis that’s hot.
He calls one girl back to the stage. She seems to shrink to half the size as she is separated from her pack, looking down at her feet as she hurries to his side, hiding behind the pink streak in her blond hair, sleeves drawn down over her knuckles.
As she joins Forrest, he flashes her an encouraging smile, and she scowls back at him, at everyone in the audience, at her feet. Just the sight of her makes me feel like hiding in a cubicle in the girls’ loo.
As they get onstage, her friends at the back of the room are getting restless. Phones ping, the volume on whispers is turned up to full. Seemingly unbothered, Forrest is finding the right page onhis notebook and messing about with his laptop. The girl looks at the kids as if they are there to witness her execution. I mean, they might be in a metaphorical sense.
As the kids mess around, the adults in the room, including me, sigh and turn around and give them Paddington Bear stares, but they don’t care about that. The more we huff and sigh, the louder they get. Of course, I should know this is how basically all kids their age respond to goody-two-shoes of all ages, because that was even me when I was a teen. That this audience is mostly over fifty, and rich as fuck, doesn’t exactly encourage their silence.
“Please be quiet,” I’d say back in school. “I’m trying to listen to the teacher.”
Apparently, I never learn.
“I want to thank the kids from our nearby school for coming out and working with me on my project to make art everyday again,” Forrest begins, ignoring the chatter from the back of the room with his heroic smile. “The other candidates for the Beaumont Prize have a lot of bells and whistles to play with.” Bells and whistles. Cheek. “A lot of impressive technology and a lot of demonstrable potential results, and I’m not gonna pretend that the solutions they offer won’t make the world a better place for a lot of people, they will. But I’m here to remind you all about what it takes to be human in the first place. From when we first sparked fire, and sat around its warmth to ward off the dark with stories up until right now. We are imaginative creatures. It’s our imagination that has built all of this. This house, those gardens, the painting on the walls, the books in the library—even the scientific breakthroughs you’ve heard about today couldn’t have beenimagined without someone imagining a better future. Humanity is where it is today because we experience the world, not just with our regular five senses but with our souls.”
“Arseholes?” a kid shouts out from the back. There’s a mixture of laughter and disapproving gasps. Rani stifles her fits of giggles behind her silk scarf.
“A pun,” Hal explains softly, leaning towards me. “‘Arseholes’ sounds like ‘our souls,’ you see?”
