Chapter Sixteen
So, what does a 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 of the 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.
That’s when I heard the crying, coming from somewhere in the great hall.
It was the sound of a small child sobbing and the first thing that I had encountered since Hal told me who he was. This sound
seemed to bring me to my senses because, in a weird kind of way, it was familiar.
There was always some crying going in the kids’ homes I lived in growing up, especially from the younger children, the ones who didn’t understand yet what was happening or why—why they had been taken away from the parent they loved and depended on.
That had been me for a while, and then when I was older, I made it my job to take care of those frightened kids the best that I could: find a teddy for them to hug, a cartoon to watch, and a biscuit to eat—anything to make them feel a little less lonely and scared and a bit more at home.
That’s what the plaintive cry reminded me of, a cry so sad and bewildered that you could almost feel the weight of it in the
air, dragging the night down to meet it.
It sounds weird, but that was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. It pulled me out of the state of shock and back
into the early hours of that summer night. There were a lot of people staying in the castle, and not just for the competition.
There were more visitors in the grounds on holiday or attending courses. Maybe someone’s toddler had woken up in the night
and wandered off without their parents knowing. The poor child had to be very frightened.
“Hello?” I called out, following the cry into the vaulted cool of the grand hallway.
“Mama?” I heard a little voice call out. “Mama?”
“Hello, no need to be scared. I can help,” I called into the shadowy hallway. My footsteps echoed off the marble floors. The
crying bouncing off every surface made it seem as if it were coming from everywhere.
“You don’t need to hide,” I told the air, gently. “Come out, and I’ll help you find your mummy.”
That’s when I saw a small white face peering at me from between the balustrade of the stairs, a tiny white hand clutching
onto the carved wood of a baluster.
“Hello there,” I said, approaching slowly. “Hello there, little one. You wait there and we will find your mummy together, okay?”
I kept the pale, frightened face in view, except for the one second that it took to turn the corner and start climbing the
stairs. But when I put my foot on the bottom step, I stopped dead, my mouth falling open in astonishment.
There was no child sitting on the stairs waiting me. And no way that they could have gotten all the way up the stairs or down
past me without being seen.
The child had vanished. I remembered the story that Lady B told me, of the little girl, Eliza, who had died just a few weeks
before her mother, Cecily, whose portrait hung in my room.
Then I heard the noise of everyone else coming back from the star safari, and I ran up the stairs and into my room, locking
the door behind me. I don’t know if it was the whiskey or the shock, or the haunting, but I half expected the Blue Lady to
be standing there by the fireplace waiting for me, wanting to know why I hadn’t brought her child to her. The room was empty,
though, and silent.
There was a knock on the door, and I froze.
“Ava?” Rani called through the door. “You okay, love?”
I thought for a moment and snored loudly.
“That is the fakest snore I have ever heard,” she said. “But point taken. Look, I know you don’t want to talk about what happened
between you and Hal tonight, and you don’t have to. But for what it’s worth, the poor bloke looked miserable for the rest
of the night, really worried he’d upset you. Anyway, you know where I am if you want me. Hope you sleep well!”
I snored again.
“Night then,” Rani said. I heard her door open and close.
Sitting on the end of my bed, I looked at the portrait of Cecily and Eliza. Once I was a very small girl who had lost her
mum and couldn’t work out why. And once, my mum was just like Cecily, trying to figure out where it all went wrong and how
she’d lost me. Suddenly, the thought of mum and daughter spending the last few hundred years looking for one another and never
ever succeeding made me want my mum. It made me want to cry myself to sleep. And that was before I even thought about what I was going to do about Hal and
FreeThought and the fate of humanity.
So, I made up my mind to do what I normally do when something so overwhelming is happening that I feel like I might spontaneously
combust if I think about it.
And that is to pretend it’s not happening and carrying on as if it isn’t.
So, as we enter the second week of the competition, Rani thinks I’ve reached burnout, my temporary amnesty with Forrest is
over, and as for Hal, well, that’s a little more complicated, as you are about to find out.