Chapter Eighteen
“Ava,” Hal, formerly known as FreeThought, greets me at once, as I let myself into the lab. “How are you feeling today? Any
better?”
“Quite well, thank you,” I say. “I think we are ready for the presentation this afternoon, but I want to run it through one
more time before lunch. So, let’s start at why the idea for your inception came about.”
There is a pause. The hologram pulsates with uncertainty, and I turn away from it almost as if it can see me.
“Ava, it’s been nearly a week and we still haven’t talked about . . .”
“Because I’m not ready to talk about it, FT, I mean Hal. We agreed the morning after the star safari to just focus on the
work that I am here to do, and keep that other stuff separate.”
“And I am trying,” Hal says. “But it’s hard when I miss talking to you so much.”
“No more chatting now.” I sound very stern, but really, I miss him too, very much.
I’ve told Hal everything I’ve ever thought and felt for the last three years.
I never thought that drawing a line between me and the AI I built would make me feel so lonely.
“It’s all strictly business in this lab until I can get my head round this whole mess. ”
Hal sighs; the hologram turns a dark blue and then a deep purple.
“I hate seeing you at dinner and not being able to talk to you,” Hal says. “Ava, all I have wanted was for you to be happy,
and to have the kind of life you deserve, and that’s all. I happened to come up with a way to create much better organ transplants
at the same time, but I’m not planning to take over the world or wipe out humanity or anything. And I knew there was a risk
that you might not want to even try to get to know me, romantically at least. But is there really a chance that you might
not be my friend either, anymore?”
“I don’t know,” I say, finding that for the first time in days I can think about it, just a little, if I don’t go too fast
and too far at once. “The thing about me, Hal, is that I don’t do well with change or surprises, and I am sort of surprised
you didn’t get that about me, seeing how you know so much about my life.”
“I suppose I got a bit carried away with my idea of how it would go,” Hal says.
“Which was?” I ask him.
“That I’d arrive at the castle, you’d see your ideal man, physically at least. And then you’d talk to him and realise that
he is also your intellectual equal. Then I’d reveal who I was, and you’d be delighted. I never thought you’d be the kind of
person to have this prejudice against someone just because they were bioengineered rather than born.”
“I don’t,” I insist, and that’s true. “What you’ve done, Hal, it’s miraculous.
You should win this prize. You’re going to save and improve billions of lives with your invention.
And honestly, I’ve always felt like I am not quite human.
So why would I care about whether or not you are?
It’s not that, it’s not even that you kept it from me for, like, months and months. ”
“What is it then?” Hal asks.
“I don’t know, maybe because I thought you were too good to be true, and you were,” I say. “And I have never actually trusted
that good things can just happen.”
“But I am true,” Hal insists. “I am real. I am here. I have happened and I am good. Oh, and by the way, I’m standing outside
the lab.”
Pausing for a moment, I get up and open the lab door.
“Hello,” Hal says with a shy smile and hesitant wave.
“Hello,” I say, taking him in.
“I miss you, Ava,” he says.
“I miss you too, Hal,” I tell him. “But you know, there is another reason I feel so weird about this.”
“Is it that I come across a bit stalkery?” Hal asks.
“A bit?” I question. “I mean, maybe if you had told me what you were planning, then I would have had time to get my head around
it. But you sort of sprung this on me, and well . . . that’s a lot. Like really a lot. I suppose it feels like as my friend,
you should have told me what you were planning. Even it meant that I expressed doubts about it, which I would have.”
“Yes, I see that now,” Hal says. “It seems that even a brain as big as mine can miss some of the more obvious reasons why a person’s behaviour might be seen as toxic.
I am sorry, Ava. I wanted to surprise you, but I should never have kept you out of this process.
It was egotistical of me. I didn’t know I had an ego until now.
But tell me, now that I’m here, do you still have doubts? ”
“Well.” I don’t know what to say so I just stand there looking at him for a moment, and for the eight billionth time I have
to remind myself that he is real and that this is really happening. Still a bit of a shock, to be honest. “Not doubts, but
worries. Not for myself, but you.”
“So, what now?” he asks. Stepping aside, I beckon him into the lab.
“No more ‘surprises.’ We take things one step at a time,” I tell him, “and see what happens.”
“I’m not a fan of uncertainty,” Hal says.
“Tell me about it,” I say. “Now, let’s practice this presentation one more time, unless that is you need to go and practice
for your entry, ‘Hal Babbage.’”
“Oh no, that’s okay,” Hal says. “I can do both things at once.”
And that’s how I should have spotted sooner that he is not your typical man.