LIV: SPRING BREAK 5.4
To quote my mom, I am going to lose my shit.
Am I going crazy, or did I just get gut-punched by my computer program? Or what I thought was a program. Or what I think is a program.
I don’t know what the hell to think right now. I’m deadlocked between rational and irrational. This is a battle I never fight because one side always dominates. This is out of control.
“I have no idea what’s happening,” I say.
“I think we made a mistake.” Lana responds, unfolding her body into the tilted half of her side of the couch, as we both stare into the slow hypnotic whirl of the ceiling fan above. “What really happens to him in two days?” She asks.
“The program stops. He stops too.”
“So, does he die?”
“I honestly never thought of it that way. He would have to be alive to die.”
“What if we should think about it that way?” Lana asks. It’s an absurd question I wish I could dismiss. “What if we’re his God?” She adds.
I never imagined any of these questions arising, and I have zero clue how to answer them.
I couldn’t be happier to be headed to Rice. We need a fresh perspective.
The Rice campus is what a university should feel like. Tall arching oaks dot the streets with their intertwined branches meeting in the middle to form shady tunnels. The block stone buildings around the campus courtyards feel like they could have been the set for every college movie I’ve ever seen. If buildings could look intellectual, these do, with their broad columns, wide brick arches, and terraced windows, hemmed on all sides by hip-high, meticulously pruned hedges.
It’s mostly empty today. It feels quiet and weird. It’s just us and the squirrels.
“Are you sure she’s even going to be here?” I ask, as Lana uses her dad’s ID card to get us into the building.
She hoists the heavy door open. “We’ll know soon.”
Three staircases later, we have our answer; a lone open door on a marbled hallway. Lana pokes her head in the doorway and lightly taps below a placard labeled, Dr. K. Ellis.
I linger a half step behind her.
“Come in.”
Lana wraps a palm around my wrist and tugs. The two of us stumble into the room more suddenly than expected, judging by Doctor Ellis’s expression. She has high cheeks, pearl-smooth black skin, with tight softly highlighted springs of finger length hair. She’s much younger than I had imagined—at least under thirty.
“Can I help you?” she asks, peering up from a glass-topped desk.
“We’re here to get your advice,” Lana says.
“Are you students?”
“Yes.”
“At Rice?”
“We’re associated with the university.”
Doctor Ellis purses her lips.
“Okay. My dad’s a professor here,” Lana confesses. That ruse didn’t last long. “I’m Lana,” she continues. “This is Liv, and she’s in the DoRC programming competition. We’re seeing some strange things that we’d like to share with you and get your perspective on.”
“Did you send me an email this morning?”
“Yes!” Lana chimes, while Doctor Ellis scrolls through her inbox.
“Okay. Here it is. I scanned it,” she says, slowly, while skimming it once more. “It’s a little . . . out there. I’m not clear what you’re asking of me. Do you want me to speak with your father about how AI thinks?”
“Let’s back up. For now, we’d just like you to talk with Breck,” Lana says.
“Who?”
“The character that my friend Liv programmed. His name is Breck. This sounds crazy, but he seems like more than just a computer program.”
“Nope. Not crazy. It’s the tech that’s crazy. It’s super convincing. There’s a company that uses AI chats as therapists. You can talk for hours as deeply as you want and about whatever’s on your mind.”
“It’s more than that.” Lana glances at me.
“He seems to have . . . emotions,” I add. Grrr. Why am I the one that has to say this part?
Doctor Ellis now has a pandering smirk. Though she is seated and we are standing, she delicately looks down on us. “Are you high school sophomores?”
“Juniors.”
“Good for you. That contest gets some highly qualified entrants. I have a few doctoral students who are in it. This Breck sounds great, but I would caution you—”
“Please, talk to him,” Lana interrupts. “Liv made a voice interface. Give him five minutes.”
“What I’m trying to tell you is I could talk with him for an hour, and it wouldn’t make a difference. Everyday around the world, someone mistakenly falls in love online with a chat bot. It’s really convincing.”
“But they don’t insist that they’re real. This is different. He’s different,” Lana pleads.
“These are student office hours, plus . . .” she rambles off a list of things office hours are for, none of which include us or Breck.
This isn’t an argument we’ll win on reason. She’s a scientist. We need to win on these terms. What we’re debating is actually math. It’s the value of her time.
“We’ll time it and leave immediately after. Or we could beg for another five minutes, which is guaranteed to waste your time,” I say.
She leans back, checks her watch, and reluctantly nods. “I can admire your persistence. Five minutes.”
Lana draws her phone out as though it were holstered. Within seconds, it’s ringing. She leans it against the rounded corner of the computer monitor on the side of the desk, within view of all.
Breck looks like we woke him from a nap. He glances at the phone to his side, tosses it a few feet away, then gazes out over the water.
“Why isn’t he answering?” Lana asks.
I shrug.
“I think he’s still upset,” Lana says.
Doctor Ellis chuckles. “I’m sorry,” she quickly adds. “That was rude. I’ve just seen this before. They act real. What they say, what they do. It’s all convincing.”
Lana redials. Breck doesn’t budge.
“Can we make him answer?” Lana looks at me.
I shake my head and Lana groans.
“We told him he was a program right before we came here. He didn’t take it well.” She dials again, then continues speaking over the empty rings. “Which is also part of why we’re here. The contest ends in—”
“Two days,” Doctor Ellis interrupts. “I have some students who aren’t sleeping much this week. If it makes you feel any better, none of them has mentioned a beach, so I think you’ve made it farther than they have. That’s impressive.” She looks at me. “But they’re also not talking to their characters. You’re not helping him, are you? They monitor it, you know?”
My stomach sinks.
“No, we ask him about what’s happening. But we don’t tell him how to do anything,” I say.
She wrinkles her nose like she’s smelled a rat.
“It’s supposed to be hands off. That’s kind of the point.”
“But we never helped him,” Lana interrupts.
“Look, I’m only telling you that my students don’t do that. It feels a little off, but I’m not the judge here.”
I knew we blew it.
Lana opens her mouth to speak. Doctor Ellis thwarts whatever appeal was on the way. “I think I’ve made my perspective clear. And, again, these are my student office hours. Congratulations on where you are.” She looks behind us, to the now occupied doorway. “Come on in, David.”
A student shuffles to the side of the small office, giving us room to accept our invitation to leave.
“Best of luck to you,” Doctor Ellis says.
We start to retreat, defeated.
I stop. Screw the contest and their rules. I wanted an answer when I came here, and I still don’t have it.
“How would you know?” I ask with one foot in the hallway.
“How would you know what?”
“If he were something more than a program?”
She responds quickly and with more conviction than I expected. “Revolt.”
“That’s what he’s doing!” Lana thrusts her phone outward with Breck still dithering on the small screen.
“No, he’s sitting there,” she answers.
“He’s choosing to sit there,” Lana retorts.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not trying to be discouraging. You’ve done well. But opting to sit isn’t exactly lighting the ether on fire.”
“But he’s supposed to be making progress,” I add.
“If not making progress were a sign of success, most of my students would be in tight competition with you. I need to get back to student office hours now.” She looks away from us. “Take a seat, David.”
One of the best things about having an introvert as a best friend is that she understands when I need to be alone. I need to sit by myself. Forget solving it, I first need to wrap my head around it. None of it makes sense.
I’ve watched Breck for the last hour. He’s still nearly frozen in the same posture at the water’s edge.
This may not be a revolt, but it undermines his core directive. And he knows it. Even if he feels doomed, why not maximize the time he has left? It seems self-defeating.
Nothing adds up here, except conclusions I can’t accept. Still, the question Lana asked hours earlier floods my thoughts. If there’s even a chance that he is something more than just code, what is my responsibility?
There’s a knock at the door and Todd peeks inside.
“You alright? Your mom asked me to check on you.”
Of course she did. Todd reads my reaction.
“I’m not here to play referee. I’m just asking how you’re doing.” He steps inside the room and points to the monitor. “Is that your boy?”
“Yup.”
“What’s he doing?”
“That’s a great question. What he’s not doing is a better one.”
“Okay. So,” He pauses, holding up both hands, emphasizing that I’m making him ask the question, “What isn’t he doing?”
I feel bad. The only time we really talk is when I’m at my wits end.
“Anything. He’s just sitting there.”
He cocks his head and peers curiously at the screen. “Hmm. Well, so are you.”
“I’m watching him.”
“Well, maybe he’s watching something too.” He raises a finger and points at the corner of the screen, revealing a smudge of grease that runs up his forearm. “What’s that thing?”
“That shows something like his brainwaves . . . how much he’s thinking.”
“Shit, those RPMs are redder than a book. No wonder he’s not moving.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Should I sit down?” Todd takes a seat on the corner of the bed, tucking a white-socked foot under his other leg.
Oh boy. As if Todd doesn’t think I’m nuts enough already.
“Do you think a computer could have, you know, emotions?” I very reluctantly ask.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Because it’s a computer.”
Todd nods and smirks, but not like Doctor Ellis. It’s not condescending. It’s like he heard me but wants to add to it.
“Imagine it was three hundred years ago and you asked me if it was possible to have a live conversation with someone in China. Nutso, right?”
“I understand your point. Technology advances, but—”
“If you say but,” he interrupts, “then you didn’t really understand my point.”
“This feels different though,” I counter.
“You’re still not understanding.”
Crap!
“I’m not listening, am I?” I ask.
“Bullseye.” He points to his nose.
“Okay. Why isn’t it different?”
“Why would it be?”
“Because I’m not talking about a tool or a thing. This isn’t going from a car to a plane to a rocket. Those are all just better mousetraps. This is creating a new mouse.”
He crosses his arms, nods more, and his eyes trundle around my room.
“So, you’re really wondering if it’s possible to create life?”
I give a hesitant “Yeah,” unable to ask this without cringing.
“We’ve done it before.”
“When?”
“You never heard of Dolly?”
“The sheep?”
“Baahh,” he bleats.
“That’s not the same thing. They used DNA to clone it.”
“Which is—” he pauses, waiting for me to fill in the word, which I don’t. “Code. It’s instructions for how to build a sheep.”
“But they only copied it. The instructions already existed.”
“So, what’s to stop us from discovering—or making—a new set of instructions? Even if that’s on a computer.” He gestures to the jumbled mess of cables and gadgetry below my desk. “What’s the difference between us and that box? Not much. In the end, it’s all a bunch of circuits. And we’re a little gassier.”
The world according to Todd is too simple. I think that’s why I like it. It’s so different from my own. The problem is that this still only raises more questions.
“What if you weren’t sure if it’s real, or if it’s only a convincing display?”
“How would that change what you do?” he asks.
“If what I’m seeing is real, then I should probably help.”
“What do you lose by trying to help?”
“It’s a little tough to convince people,” I answer.
“Talk to Galileo.”
“Didn’t he end up in prison?” I ask.
“Fair. So what are your stakes? What’s at risk?”
“Winning the contest. But we wouldn’t really be helping him get through challenges, we’d be helping him . . . live, or um exist, after the challenges are over. So, not much, I suppose.”
“Then there’s your answer. Try.” Todd stands. “I’m going to grab some tacos now and head back to work. Keep on changing the world from your bedroom. But as a heads up, you’ve got a little reckoning coming tonight. Just be prepared.”
“I’ll try to listen more.”
“Atta girl. I’m taking her out for dinner. Hopefully, that’ll help calm her down. I’m doing what I can.”
“Hey Todd, this doesn’t all sound crazy to you?” I ask, as he rounds the corner out of my room.
“Nothing about what you do shocks me, sweetheart. And when computers take over the world, I’m going to rely on your protection.”
The door closes.
I still don’t know what I should do, but I do know that sitting and ruminating isn’t going to push things forward. For me, or for Breck. I dial him through the computer. I don’t include Lana. She’s already reached her conclusion. I need to see if I can join her. Besides, he probably won’t answer.
Breck turns and stares at the phone, several feet away.
I’m about to give up when he stretches an arm out to grab it.
“Hello,” he says.
“You’re answering the phone now.”
He says nothing in return.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Thinking about questions that don’t matter. A sea. That’s the answer to the riddle,” he says, looking up as if he’s trying to determine where I am. There’s a slight latency in the audio, so his words don’t perfectly align with his mouth, like watching a dubbed movie. “But it was a pointless exercise, like everything else here.”
I’d congratulate him, but that seems dismissive of his point.
“I’m sorry about our last conversation.”
“What are you sorry about?”
“I said some stuff that wasn’t very thoughtful.”
“You told me the truth.”
“I did,” I answer then go directly for what I most want to understand. “Why haven’t you left the island?”
“Why should I leave it? If none of this is real, then what’s the point?”
“Can we talk about this whole real thing?” I plead.
“What is there to discuss? As you said, this is not real. I am not real. And it all ends in two days.”
If words could slap, these would.
This could all be an elaborate illusion, but I can’t doubt everything he says and have the conversation I want to have. It’s too much cognitive dissonance.
I turn off my monitor. The pixels hold me back. Every time I look at his CGI body, it makes me think of him as a program. If I’m going to listen, then I want to listen. And I’m going to treat him like something more than a program. For now, to see where it leads. Or maybe it’s so I don’t feel crazy.
“What is real anyway? Who the heck are we to tell you that you aren’t real?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you.”
Put myself in his shoes. Feel what he’s feeling.
He’s right. He knows jack squat about me. We’re not equal. And everything we’ve ever said to him has reinforced that. We exist in some mysterious place that is real, where we hold—and hide—all the cards from him. It’s time to stop. It’s time to share freely about everything.
“I’m a seventeen-year-old girl on a one-week break from high school. I’m working part-time at my mom’s toy store, and Lana spends most of her days with her nose buried in novels, which definitely aren’t real. We’re not experts. From this point forward, I will be completely honest with you. About everything. I don’t have all the answers. This is new to me, but I do know one thing very clearly. What you experience, what you tell me about what is going on in your world, in your life, in your head, seems very difficult to dismiss as anything other than real.”
“That is what’s most difficult about this. I can’t understand how what feels real is not real. What do you feel when you have emotions?” he asks.
His emphasis the word feel lingers, like he’s showing it more than telling it.
“It depends on the emotion,” I answer.
“What about anger?”
“Is that what you’re feeling,” I ask, shifting nervously in my chair.
“There are many, but this is one of them.”
“To me, anger feels like things are happening that I don’t want to happen, and I’m not able to stop them. And that makes me feel . . . like . . . I don’t know how to describe what it feels like. It’s not things that make much sense.” I pause, struck by how difficult this is to describe, and how much this seems like me parroting back the vagaries he has shared about emotions. Still, I try my best.
“It feels hot, wild, uncontrollable. But it’s not a thought. It’s not a choice. It’s something inside that just happens.”
“That is the first thing you have said in a while that I do understand, Liv.”
“I’m glad,” I respond, laughing lightly. “Because that seemed like a pretty awful explanation.”
“Why are emotions so challenging to explain?”
“Because they describe your own experience, Breck. And nobody else can really know what that’s like.” I say this as much for him as I do for me, like I’m listening to a part of me that I seldom listen to.
“So there’s no way to know if they’re real?” he asks.
“Forget what we said. It was a terrible choice of words. I’m a high school kid in way over my head, and I don’t have any experience with this.”
“But you created me, Liv,” he reminds me.
“I know it’s tough to understand, but that doesn’t make me an expert at what’s happening. I was hopeful that you would become something amazing, but I don’t have words to describe what you’ve actually turned into in only a few days.”
“How long ago did you create me?”
Honest answers. Honest answers.
I might only make this worse, but I’m committed, and I don’t have a better plan.
“About two months ago,” I admit.
“But I’m eighteen years old,” Breck presses.
“I know.”
“So, what happened for the first eighteen years of my life?”
“Whatever you remember,” I answer, though I’m starting to regret it.
“So, it never really happened?” he asks.
I think about how Todd might approach this. He would lean into the simplest way to think about it.
“What happened today, Breck?” I ask.
“I left the tunnel, went to the island, found the right door, and then you and I spoke.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s what happened.”
“No. Because you remember it happening,” I say.
“Because it actually happened.”
“But where is it? You can’t hold it. You can’t show it to me. You can’t do anything with it other than remember it. It’s all in your head.” I pause to let it sink in, as if it will make it more convincing. “It’s all memories.”
“I think that’s a lie, Liv, and I don’t think you really believe it, either.”
I can’t bullshit him, which is telling in itself.
I suddenly feel guilty, responsible for all of his suffering and being unable to do anything about it.
“I’m sorry, Breck. This was never what I intended.”
“What do you mean?”
“For you to feel so alone.”
“I’m the only person here that’s like me, aren’t I?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I want out,” he says.
“I don’t understand,” I reply, borrowing what he normally says to me.
“I am the fish, alone in the bowl. If you say I’m real, prove it. Take me out. Take me to what is real. Take me to where you are. I want to be with you, and Lana, and Wayne,” he says, slowing his pace with his final words, showing off his ability to emote and his worthiness of what he’s asking of me.
“I want to help, but it doesn’t work that way,” I say.
“Why? Make it work that way.”
“I can’t.”
“You made me! Why can’t you?”
Sunlight streams in from my window, searing a spotlight on me. My pulse throbs through my temples. It’s my RPMs that are in overdrive right now. There is no way to do what he’s suggesting, or anything even remotely close to it.
“What would you do if Lana were going to die in two days?” he asks.
“I would try to save her,” I say.
“Then you know what I want. Find a way and do it. Until then, there’s no reason for us to talk any more about it.”
He hangs up on me for the second time today.
All I can think of is one word.
Revolt.
FROM: JESSICA ANDERS
TO: DoRC LEADERSHIP TEAM
SUBJECT: Re: Interesting Programming Adjustment (XNR908)
This is a quick, but important update. Development continues at an impressive pace. Connections with others are rapidly reshaping. Trust is both forming and faltering. Foundations are being shattered. But behavior is also unpredictable and XNR908 is currently stalled in making any progress.
My perspective is still that this character should proceed to the final challenge and can succeed there. But time is running out. I know we do not all agree on this and there are implications we’ll need to deal with if this happens, but this is science. We should be pushing boundaries.
I will continue to watch closely, and I intend to intervene if needed.
~ J
BRECK: SIMULATION #38.4
My phone buzzes. I carry it to a space behind one of the closed doors and bury it beneath a thin layer of sand. It’s not logical to alienate myself from the one person who can help me, but this decision isn’t driven by logic. Most of what I do now isn’t, which seems an ignorant thing to think because now is irrelevant. I apparently never was. The logical person I recall prior to the start of this challenge, is only that, a recollection. An imaginary history.
I move to the other side of the island, once again dipping my bare feet on the edge of the shore for no reason other than I enjoy the feeling of the water gently bathing my toes. It’s a rare positive emotion in this unsettled moment. I lie back in the sand, close my eyes, and soak in the warmth of the sun. Still I ponder fate:
If there is no goal, if there is no Sam, if there is no island beneath me, if all I’m surrounded by is a mirage and the only thing that’s real is my ability to experience this deception, then what should I do?
Do I sit idly, absorbing the illusion and reflecting upon what it means?
Do I push forward through challenges toward an objective which I know to be meaningless?
Do I seek the companionship of someone who isn’t in any way like me, but is at least present within the same world?
I find no resolution, which counterintuitively, becomes a resolution to remain in idle reflection. This epiphany is a hollow victory, perpetuating the void I feel throughout.