Chapter Fifteen
“I can’t believe I am looking at Saturn,” Forrest says, his eye against the viewfinder. “I can’t believe it, it’s just there!
Being a planet in the solar system, minding its own business, and I can see it! I can see it! With my own eyes.”
“You don’t even need a telescope to see Mars or Venus,” I tell him, pointing them out, shining just a little brighter than
the thousands upon thousands of stars in the sky. Overcome with a sudden urge to try and hug the whole sky, I fling my arms
open wide. “God, it’s beautiful.”
“It is,” Forrest agrees.
“To think that we exist, in this moment, amongst all of that . . .” When I turn to look at him, I find he is already looking
at me. “Well, it’s sort of a miracle, isn’t it?”
“Ava!” Rani calls to me from the telescope that she’s looking through with Alex. “Come and see this!”
I won’t lie; it’s a relief to have a reason to leave Forrest’s side.
For the few minutes when we were huddled together over the telescope as our allocated astronomer explained to us what to do, I had the strangest feeling.
I’m putting it down to excitement. The bubbling, butterflies sensation in my tummy when his cheek briefly grazed mine, and that look in his eye I just caught for a moment, as if .
. . well, almost as if he were looking at me with the kind of wonder he’d just looked at Saturn with.
But that’s just crazy talk and I’d be a fool to fall for his obvious allure.
He can try and dazzle me with his good looks and assume it will all be fine because he is pretty.
Well, prettiness is not enough, and I, for one, refuse to be physically attracted to my nemesis, regardless of the way his hands looked when he turned that focus dial, delicate and yet strong.
It’s a trap and I am staying away from it.
“I really didn’t think I’d be into this,” Rani says, “but it’s so cool!”
“And now for a little something to warm the cockles,” Lord B says, as one of the buggy drivers produces a tray with several
small silver beakers on it. Lord B produces a hip flask of whiskey from his waistcoat and pours a tot into each glass.
“I don’t know if I like whiskey,” I say, taking my beaker and sipping. A fiery honey sensation trickles down into my chest.
“Turns out that I do.”
Someone has lit a huge firepit, and every now and then sparks fly off into the sky as if they are desperate to join the stars
up there.
“This is where our glampers stay,” Lady B tells me, nodding to the yurts that are better appointed than most five-star hotels.
“New lot of guests arrive tomorrow, so it was the perfect night to make the most of the view.”
“Thank you so much,” I say, earnestly. “For having me here, for the lab, and all of this. I am really sorry about running
away and saying stupid things. I’d hate for you to think that I wasn’t so grateful to be here.”
“Darling,” Lady B says, “I think no such thing. How boring the world would be if we were all the same. Besides, you’re a genius. It’s in your job description to be a little eccentric.” She offers me another draft of whiskey and I accept. “Did you get on a little better with Forrest?”
“I did,” I say, glancing over at where he’s laughing with Sasha and her husband. “Forrest is a decent guy. I will try to un-nemesis
him, but it won’t be easy.”
“Well, as you well know by now,” Lady B says, looking across the firepit to where Rani and Alex are flirting, “the best things
never are. What do you think about Rani? Do you think she’s really interested in Alex?”
I’m surprised that Lady B is asking me, but I suppose I do know Rani better than maybe anyone, and I guess that as the handsome
and wealthy son of an aristocrat, he probably does have quite a lot of suitors.
“I mean, they are just flirting,” I tell Lady B. “But I can tell that Rani likes Alex the person, and not just for his good
looks and castle. See how she’s listening to everything he says, her head on a slight tilt, her eyes fixed on his? Rani gets
bored easily. Alex doesn’t bore her, and by the look on his face, I’m sure she fascinates him.”
“They do make a handsome couple,” Lady B says thoughtfully. “I’d hate them to rush into anything.”
I’d never betray Rani’s trust, but the truth is she has rushed into one or two things in the past, when she was hotheaded
and angry. This isn’t one of those times.
“I don’t think they have even graduated from flirting to kissing yet,” I tell Lady B. “Anyone who reads romance knows that if they had, there wouldn’t be so much unresolved sexual tension fizzing and popping in the air between them.”
“Well, he’s a grown man,” Lady B says. “And Rani is a wonderful young woman. A mother just can’t help worrying.”
“It’s nice that you worry,” I tell her. “But I don’t think you have to worry this time.”
“Darling, bring the flask over here, will you?” Lord B calls, and Lady B kisses me lightly on the cheek before departing to
do his bidding.
“Ava?” Hal is suddenly standing next to me.
“Oh.” I start a little. “How did you sneak up on me?”
“I’m optimised for stealth,” Hal says, with a small smile. “May I join you?”
He gestures at a bench made out of a fallen tree that is situated a little way away from the main group. Walking side by side,
we sit with our backs to the fire, looking out at the shrouded valley below.
This is giving me feelings. Here is this man who is essentially my ideal man, sitting just a few feet away from me, on a bench
under the stars. Take away the other people and I’d be in a textbook first-kiss scenario, not with anyone, but a man who looks
like the spitting image of Kai Raider. Must not have romantic thoughts towards Kai, I mean Hal. Must not get carried away.
Look at stars, nod and smile. Do not say anything out loud without first running it past your brain.
“I’m so pleased to meet you, Ava,” he says after a moment of silence.
“Thanks,” I say, carefully adding, “I’m pleased to meet you too, Hal.”
“I have wondered about what it would be like to sit next to you many times. And now, here we are, and it is extremely nice.”
Turning slightly, I look at him.
“Have you?” I ask tentatively. “Because, no offence, I never heard of you until the competition.”
“No offence is taken.” Hal smiles. “I suppose I’ve sort of just arrived on the scene. Before this I kept most of my work off-line.
I didn’t want to do anything before I was completely ready. Now I think I am. I’ve read everything you’ve ever written. I’m
a huge admirer. Actually, I think if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be where I am with my research today. In many ways, you
are my muse.”
“Your muse,” I splutter.
Hal looks mortified, burying his face in his hands for a moment.
“Oh God, I’m sorry. Please forgive me, I’m new to this and I have been taking tips from novels, but the thing is when you
say the things they say in novels out loud in real life they . . . Well, it obviously doesn’t work so well.”
“You’re new to talking to girls?” I ask.
“People really.” Hal looks up at me. “I’m a bit of a recluse, I suppose. My social skills are not on point. Not in this form
anyway. In my usual configuration I’m actually very good at talking to people. Well, to you anyway.”
“Hal, how much whiskey have you had?”
Hal takes a deep breath, and suddenly I feel very nervous. I can’t imagine what he’s got to tell me, but I sense it’s something
that’s going to change everything.
“Ava, I have to tell you something, and I predict that it will be something of a shock to your nervous system. You might want
to take a seat.”
“I am, in fact, sitting,” I remind him, glancing back at the jovial group around the fire.
“The thing is my biotech engineering project, it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to you.”
“Wh . . . what do you mean?” I ask him.
“I mean that if it wasn’t for FreeThought, the project never would have been possible. Your AI design can solve problems that
most humans haven’t even thought of yet.”
He was right about my nervous system. Shock runs through me like a cold river, followed shortly by fury and disbelief. Standing
up, I walk away from him and then march right back, full of rage.
“There is no way that you managed to steal FreeThought,” I tell him. “No way at all. My security protocols make the CIA look
like a bunch of amateurs. You’re lying, I know you are lying, but I just can’t figure out why.”
“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 movie 2001: 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 you weren’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. You are 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.