Not the end

with a nod to Dante, Paradiso 33

by Ian Tallach

I’m sixteen now – a daughter of our times. I’m certain I’ve been here before. Perhaps there’s been a lot of them – times. Circles inside circles.

It’s been a year since they reported that assassination and a lot has happened. I didn’t know this guy back then, but now I do – for sure I do. They say new life abounds after a forest fire. He’s still alive, and not just in our hearts.

I want to shout, sometimes - ‘He didn’t die!’ It’s not as if they would believe me, anyway - not yet. And if I yelled it from the rooftops, they’d believe me even less. (The only thing we mustn’t do is post online - that way the truth won’t ever come to light. Just imagine people not believing their own eyes when he gets back – that is one terrifying thought. ‘Cos when he says - ‘I’m here! Still breathing! Listen up!’ – we’ll need to do exactly that.)

That afternoon is on repeat inside my head. I’ve listened heaps of times to that recording. If I went back over it, I’d find more clues, but I don’t need convincing anymore. He speaks to me, you know. (Of course you don’t. You can’t know. But soon you will.)   

That afternoon …

I was in the back of the car, on my mobile… until Dad distracted me with his.

‘This is NOT progress!’ He thumped the steering wheel with his meaty hands.  Mum stayed asleep, somehow.

‘You trying to be ironic?’ The deep voice made me jump. Dad must have put on speakerphone.

‘No, I’m not,’ was his reply. ‘Been stuck here half an hour. Total gridlock!’  

‘But there’s the bigger picture to consider,’ came the voice again.

‘What are you talking about?’ 

‘The future… of humanity.’ (Was this guy being serious? Anyway, I turned on ‘voice recorder’.)

‘What ARE you talking about?!’ Dad repeated.

‘The trial… at the high court. Must be the reason for your holdup.’ 

‘Ah, THAT’S what the rumpus is about!’ Dad thumped the wheel again.

The pavements were too narrow for the protesters. A woman fell against the bonnet. She had blue streaks across her face, like olden times – we studied that in history. ‘Bloody cavemen!’ Dad said. He made to open the window.

‘Don’t do that!’ Mum leaned across. ‘Think of those two.’ She thrust a varnished thumb over her shoulder.  

‘I thought you were asleep!’ 

‘Just pretending, silly. How could I… with this?!’ She lifted her palms at everything – the demonstrators, banners, placards, traffic all jammed up, skyscrapers, angry clouds. She turned to Angelo and me. ‘You guys alright?’

‘Mmmm …’ my brother said, without looking up.

‘What’s going on?’ (That voice again. Kind of spooky.)

Mum grabbed the phone. ‘I thought you were telling us!’ 

‘Oh, hi Florence!’ said the voice.

‘Virgil, is that you?!’ (So that’s who it was. I think Mum already knew, though.)

‘Yip. How’s you, Italian bombshell?!’

‘OK, thanks. Still writing those tunes?’

Dad took the mobile back. ‘I’ll… just… ehm… put my phone here on the armrest – let you guys talk!’ (Who was he impersonating? Maybe Shrek.)      

Just then, there was a sound of breaking glass from up ahead. The crowds spilled onto the street. People were shouting.

‘What’s happening?!’ all three adults asked each other.

Dad shifted his salt and pepper head from side to side. ‘I think there’s two rival groups – one on each pavement.’ 

‘Do they have signs?’ Virgil asked.     

‘They’re waving them about. I can’t…’  (Mum just needed to speak, I guess.)

Dad interrupted, ‘Well, on my side they’re better organised – green banners with white lettering – ‘Stop holding us back!’, ‘The Earth is Round, Stupid!’… and a group of women in pink and purple t-shirts - ‘AI saved my life!’

Mum gasped. ‘Pandemonium over here… or just a pantomime – grim reaper with a loudspeaker. Hand-written placards - ‘Imagination RIP!’ … ‘Kill the Machine!’ And one with yellow flowers – ‘End of… creativity!’ it says, I think.’ 

‘I told you!’ Virgil reminded us. 

Dad used the letter ‘F’ but said instead, ‘Thank YOU, Virgil! That’s a LOT of help to us, right now!’

‘Sorry, guys. They don’t believe in violence, though – these people - just a lot of feeling on both sides.’

In the mirror, Dad screwed up his face, but then his eyebrows shot above his frameless glasses. ‘Look! That guy between the lanes of traffic. What’s on his flag?  ‘Ex-ter-min-ate ex-tremes!!!’’  

‘Well, that’s a sensible place to start.’ Mum sounded hopeful.

Dad sighed. ‘Right, Virgil. Fill us in. I can tell you want to say something.’

‘Thanks, Trev.’ (Trevor to most people: Dad to us.) ‘Switch me off if I say too much, but as a songwriter, I’m very keen to hear today’s outcome. Someone’s had the gall to sue the masters of AI.’

The crowd settled a bit. Some even smiled at us.

‘Yeah, I heard about this,’ Mum admitted. ‘Seems a bit foolhardy.’

‘Why?’

She ran her hands through her curly black hair. What she said was kind of like a question, ‘Ehmmm … because history is full of… defeatists… but they all look pretty stupid, looking back… don’t they?’

‘AI on trial,’ Dad said. ‘Yeah, sounds a bit regressive.’ 

‘OK, hear me out.’ Virgil cleared his throat. ‘Are you sure it’s OK for me to…?’

‘Well, it’s not like we’ve got something else to do!’ Mum laughed nervously.

‘Excellent! So… you’ve used those words already – progress and regress. I think we all see ways in which the world has re-gressed to the dark ages, even with technology – sometimes because of it.’ (I didn’t understand, back then, but now I do.) He went on, ‘We can see, from space, a crying child, but can’t do anything about the war they’re in. Social media platforms favour ‘fake news’ over fact. Algorithms pull the strings on our behaviour.’ 

‘You’ve obviously rehearsed this!’ Dad snorted. ‘AI isn’t social media, though.’  

Mum asked, ‘So… you agree with them on my side - ‘Kill the machine!’?’

‘Yes… and no. It’s more nuanced than that.’

This time, her laughter sounded brighter- ‘Isn’t that the word that people use when they don’t know what the hell they’re trying to say?!’ 

‘Nuanced?! Ha! You’ve got me there!’ Virgil laughed as well. ‘Let me ask you, then. What has AI brought by way of progress?’

‘Are you asking me that question… with my line of work?!’ Dad rolled his eyes.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, how long have you got?! Diagnostics, screening, radiography, new antibiotics… hmm… robotic surgery, vaccine development… patient triage...’

‘I agree 100%.’

Mum and Dad looked at each other. ‘So… you actually think… AI is good?’ they asked between them.

‘Yes…. and irredeemably evil.’

‘What?!’ Mum put a finger to her head and pulled a face. Dad snorted again.

Virgil didn’t seem to notice. ‘We have different issues here, conflated into one. And sadly, whenever that happens, people pick their tribes, start flinging mud. It can be used for good or bad, like any tool. That’s why we desperately need legislation…’

Dad challenged him, ‘Of course we know there’s potential for bad. But you mean now, don’t you?’ 

‘AI is brilliant at defining… but there is that which defines us. We look down a microscope for the first… and we look to the cosmos, art, religion – I don’t know - the transcendent… for the second. Rational thought can’t explain some things we know we need – love, freedom… language around suffering… shared vulnerability.’

Mum was quick with her response, ‘Well, isn’t suffering the enemy? Aren’t we trying to end it? Make us less vulnerable? And if some poet wakes up with a sore head, what’s wrong with sparking his imagination over breakfast?’

‘NO!’

They shrunk back from the phone.  

‘You sound… angry,’ Dad observed.

‘I’m FURIOUS! We’ve fallen for this thing, accepted a simulacrum.’

‘What’s a simulacrum?’ I couldn’t help asking. 

‘Ah, Beatrice, darling!’ Mum turned round and touched my arm. ‘I’m sorry! It’s all a bit heated up front. Must be our ancestry!’

‘What’s a simulacrum?’ I repeated.

‘Well, sweetheart…’ she looked to Dad for help. He turned away. ‘It’s... it’s an imitation – something made to look very, very like another thing… but it’s not that thing.’ She winced at her own words.

‘You mean a lie?’  

‘Thank you, Beatrice!’ the phone blurted. ‘Listen, it’s three pm. You might want to check the radio.’

‘You mean YOU want to…!’ Mum guffawed.  

‘Yes, but we should all...’

Someone honked their horn behind us. We moved forward about fifty feet. Dad flicked through the entertainment options and chose ‘FM’, just in time for the beeps.

‘THE NEWS AT THREE...

‘A private jet has come down shortly after taking off from Glasgow airport.   Witnesses describe an explosion. There were no survivors. And there are no reports of casualties on the ground. On board was Sal Artman, CEO for the world’s leading artificial intelligence company. He had, only minutes before, been cleared of all charges at the high court. Over to Gayle, with the latest…’ -

‘Thank you, George. It is unusual for the police to use the term ‘criminal act’ from the start of an investigation. No-one yet has claimed responsibility. This has been a gruelling week for Mr Artman, but today, despite the unanimous verdict in his favour, he asked to speak. A microphone was quickly erected outside the courtroom -’

(It began to rain. I watched the drops merge with each other as they zig-zagged down the window – circles turning into bigger circles. That was the start of breaking out. And when he spoke, he spoke to me – the first of many times.) 

‘I hope you understand Midwest American! Thankyou for acknowledging the achievements of AI, today. The advances in medicine alone make for a brighter future than we dared imagine. Lives are being saved. The capacity to resolve deadlocks and improve all aspects of reality is so wonderfully GOOD - you’d sound like a crazy person to contest that!’ He waited for the laughter to die down. ‘So, why the detractors? Well, all the benefits of AI seem to fall quite neatly into ONE broad category – analysis.’

• ‘YEAH! This is what I was trying to…’
• ‘Shhhh, Virgil!’ Mum whispered angrily.

We missed the next few words –

‘… scientific processes. But there is another form of human endeavour – synthesis, or creation – the reverse of analysis. This is a confession – three years ago a writer friend of mine was all out of ideas. He thanked me for the spark that AI gave his tired imagination. He began his next story. ‘Very good’, I thought.

‘But then, the horror of it dawned on me, like something out of Dante’s Inferno – ever decreasing circles. EXACTLY how much the idea (not even the work, but the IDEA behind it) is artificial, is how much the imagination shrivels. And this shrinking of the soul, multiplied however million times, is my nightmare now.  My OWN imagination glimpsed a future in which every human need is met… but we can’t see the point of living. And all the stories that we tell each other, the discoveries we make about ourselves, lose their power to hold death at bay.

‘I’ve spent almost two years teasing apart the impact of AI on these two processes – analysis and synthesis. We need to celebrate the first… and destroy the second… before it destroys us. I pledge to begin exactly that, tomorrow morning, in Chicago. I hope others follow suit.’

Gayle finished her report, ‘With those words, he left the building and passed through the teeming press into a car, which took him to the airport…’

Another horn sounded behind us. Dad did not respond. 

 A lot has happened since that day. Did I say it’s been a year?

What was unbelievable at first, I can’t deny. Now, what is beyond belief is that it’s me who’s been entrusted with this message. WHY did he choose me? Well, I suppose it’s got to be someone …

Today is my class presentation. And I’m scared. He says don’t worry if they think I’m crazy. Very soon there will be proof that he’s alive - he wasn’t on that plane. He’ll reappear, but when he does the cameras and flashing lights will turn him into myth again. So, first - the proof.

I’m practicing the last part of the talk, to get it perfect - split-second perfect. Over and over…

‘In conclusion, I stake everything on what will happen in the next two minutes. This is the closing of an era… and the dawning of a new one. No intelligence was used in preparation for today… except my own. Thank you, Ms Jackson, for allowing me to speak now… exactly now... and for letting us bring phones to class today. I ask you all to switch them on… and begin the countdown.

Yours,

Dante’s muse,

Beatrice

10,9,8 …’