how hard you tried. Didn’t help that the lights were dimmed, tinged with green, because Mark Ocean had read how green light was meant to help you wake better, something to do with a part of the spectrum that we don’t naturally encounter. ‘Yeah, I want to go home.’
‘I can call you a cab,’ I said. I thought about persuading her to stay, which I’m pretty sure I could have done; but then, there was Laura, watching everything I was doing. Even if she wasn’t there, I couldn’t shake her.
The wait after that was interminable. Because there was nothing to be said, and nothing I could even think to begin to do. She sat on the bed, and I stood next to it, by the door, waiting for a message to come through on my cell that the cab was waiting outside. We both stared at our phones, waiting for that ding to come through.
When the cab arrived – the driver complained about how far he’d had to drive, complained about finding the building; even though they got paid really well, I know, because one time Park hacked into (or, at least, visited somewhere he shouldn’t have been while covering his tracks) the Bow account server to see if we should have been entitled to a raise (which we absolutely should have) – when he arrived, I picked up my stuff as well, both of us to be heading into the city. But she put her hand on my arm, in a totally different way to when she did it in the bar; and she said, ‘I think I’d like to go by myself.’
‘What do you mean?’ Jacket in hand, or hand in jacket, one sleeve on, the other dangling uselessly. My feet, twitching in their sneakers in that way they do when I’m anxious about something.
‘I mean, I think you should call for another cab.’ Lola didn’t make eye contact when she was saying something serious. A trait which, evidently, I found attractive in women.
‘Why can’t we share? We’ll drop you off, and then I’ll go home.’
‘I just don’t think I want to,’ she said. Everything with her was think. Nothing tangible, even though she knew exactly what she meant.
Funny, the details you remember. This night wasn’t even about her. But the details.
‘Look, I paid for it,’ I said, meaning that Bow did, but it was me, my head, my account number. ‘I’m not waiting out here,’ and she tried to shut the door, but I grabbed it. Did I grab for her? Did I reach for her hand? I grabbed the door. I stopped the door.
‘Stop it,’ she said, and I realized she was scared. Of me. I hit the wall, once, with Laura. I don’t remember why. I hit the wall, and she had the same look.
I held the car door open, and the driver’s head rocked back. His eyes, staring at the ceiling, willing us – one or both, he didn’t care – to get in. ‘Let me go. I don’t even know why you brought me here.’ On the floor, by the car door, I noticed that the bottom part of her heel had snapped off. I don’t know what it’s called. The end of the spike, stuck in the grass. ‘I mean, this place, this whole thing. Now let me go.’
‘You said you wanted to see it,’ I told her, as she yanked the door towards her. I let go. I didn’t chase the car down the gravel towards the exit, didn’t throw fists into the air to let her know I was pissed off. Didn’t howl her almost-definitely-fake name at the moon. I stood there and watched the car go, until the headlights were behind the wall of the campus and then, I don’t know. Back to the room. Looked at my watch. Took my jacket off, took my one arm out of the jacket, and I lay down on the bed. I shut my eyes and thought how pleased I was I hadn’t taken her back to the apartment. The Bow rooms might be strange, but at least they weren’t haunted.
Here’s how I met Laura. Years before she broke things off with me. Our meet cute. American girls – in my experience, but I know, it’s not everybody, not all women, whatever – they like a meet cute. They want a story. Laura didn’t give a shit about the story. Turns out, I do.
She’d done an internship for Ocean, going around every department. Four years, while she did her degree; a degree that, rumour was, Bow paid for. Most everybody else was Ivy League and massively in debt. And she didn’t even study computing. She did her degree in psychology. The two most important things about her: she was Daniel Bow’s daughter – a second-generation genius, more Jeff Buckley than Sean Lennon – and she was self-taught, a programming prodigy, building game engines or whatever. That’s why we expected great things. We didn’t expect her to try and get onto the AI project with a chatbot.
I was to see if she had what it took. Ocean wanted her software, God knows why – I mean, hindsight, right? And the mark of every great tech genius is seeing in it what other people didn’t, making the most of it, milking that cow for all it’s worth – so he wanted her. Make sure she’s not a liability. See what legs the software’s got.
I conducted Laura’s interview. I was four years older than her, still massively in debt, and I was making something of myself. All Laura had was the entitlement of a paid-for education and a claim to have traveled the world; or, at least, that corner of the world people talk about, when they say they’ve traveled the world. And there she was, kid of an icon, debt-free, shipped over from England like we should all fucking curtsey. I was furious, before I met her. And she sat down, reached over, shook my hand. ‘I’ve seen what you’re working on with SCION,’ she said, ‘it’s really interesting. You’re in charge of deep learning, right?’
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘myself and Park.’
‘Park! Oh, I met that guy.’
‘Yeah,’ I told her, ‘I’m sorry. Don’t judge us all, based on him. He’s about as much a stereotype as works here you’ll ever meet.’
‘Oh God, absolutely,’ she said. ‘If you walked behind him, I’m pretty sure you’d smell quinoa, weed, and hiking boots.’
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
* * *
I gave myself two hours of lying in that slightly-too-small crash-room bed before I abandoned any hope of sleep. I got up, took a shower. In the distance, outside, I could hear birds. It’s not an irregular thing, that I can’t sleep; and as soon as the birds start and I’m not asleep, I’m not going to be. It’s one distraction too far: the sense that there’s something out there that’s already begun, that’s already doing what it’s going to do for the day. It’s an alarm, in the truest sense of the word.
I dressed, taking underwear and a tee from a drawer. Bow provided them. Not cheap stuff. American Apparel. The company wanted you to feel as good as possible if you were doing crunch hours, the sort of work that meant you had to stay the night there. Maybe then you’d be less likely to leave if another tech company tried to poach you.
I went to the lab, lights flickering on as I walked, making me feel like I was in a movie. I liked that feeling. Always have. When everything conspires to make it seem like the things that are out of your control are actually working for you; or, better yet, that you’ve got the power to control them a little. To tell the inanimate what to do.
I sat at my desk. Booted the system. Quality time with SCION, a chance to see what state Park left the last build in. Positivity, I told myself. I had a job to do. I could work with the source code, because nobody else was there to have their own terminal. At that point, SCION was an application. Running like anything else, like, I don’t know, Internet Explorer, or iTunes. There are a million ways to make an intelligence. Some of them are multitudes of smaller applications, smaller concepts – smaller AIs – running together, and they feed off each other, passing
