“You know, you’re a really horrible person.”
“Who isn’t?”
“That — that is precisely what I mean. You think so little of other people. Not everyone is a hot broken mess like you. Is there really nobody you care about?”
This reparté had gone on for a while. Merida and Laura had a lot of time on their hands, and the halo Merida’s childish crush had given Laura was beginning to wear off. As much as Merida liked to put on a shell of detachment to keep everyone at an arm’s length, Laura’s abject misanthropy was too much for even her to bear. And now, here they were, in the women’s lockup at the Brighton police station. The night had been a long one, and by the morning the only other occupant of their cell had been released, leaving the two of them bickering tiredly.
“I came to your aid didn’t I”, Laura said. “And look what good it did me. Now we’re both in this hole.”
It was true. When the policeman had arrested Merida for, ludicriously, obstructing the course of justice just for raising her hand at the officer who blinded her with his flashlight, Laura had gotten involved. She’d followed the policeman, yapping at him in her brash American style about her rights and the unfairness of the power the policeman was exerting on her. And in some alternative storyline she would have gotten away with it, but in this storyline she had called the officers “pigs”, landing them both in the slammer.
“Yeah, that was actually kind of nice…”, Merida said, smiling for the first time in a while.
“Look, babe”, Laura said. Merida felt a warm flush on her cheeks. “I’m not a monster. I just don’t have time for every rando on the street. I’ve got my own stuff to deal with.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know… stuff”, Laura sighed.
“Real eloquent.”
“For one, this bullshit. I’ve got an economics degree from Stanford, and I’m running errands for Zee Chakramurthy.”
“Wait, Stanford? I thought you graduated from Castro Valley High School?”
“Whoa, good memory. Yeah, I might have left out some details. I did graduate from high school when I was thirteen, and out of Stanford at eighteen.”
“Were you like a child prodigy or something?”
“Something.”
“So, what are you doing here?”
“It’s a good question. Technically speaking, I’m the chief of operations at Chakra UK, but turns out, that doesn’t mean much. At Chakra, everything is a Zee show.”
“Yeah, that guy really irks me”, Merida said.
“He’s not that bad, really. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I understand it’s hard not to be a little conceited when you’re changing the world.”
“Changing — do you really believe that? I mean, The Platform is cool and all, but it’s not exactly changing the world.”
“Oh, no, sweetheart”, yet another word that spiked up Merida’s core temperature, “The Platform is not the point. It’s just a data collection device. We are running similar experiments in a dozen industries, from media to retail to manufacturing to psychotherapy, if you can believe it. There are so many different applications of the Chakra algorithm we have stopped trying to come up names for them — did you think we couldn’t think of a better name than ‘The Platform’??
“So, what’s the point then?”
“The point is for Chakra to learn everything there is to learn about human activities, so that it can… become one of us.”
“You sound like you’re an alien from another planet.”
“Ha — fair. If you spend any time at Chakra you quickly become very detached about the way normal people think. Zee’s vision is quite infectious, really. He might not be the best boss, but I wouldn’t rather work for anyone else. To answer your question — yes, I believe we are changing the world.”
“For the better, though?”
Laura rolled her eyes. “Yeah, for the better.” She motioned around her. “Look at this shithole.”
Merida took in their surroundings. They were in a clinical-looking cell, white paint and brushed meta, about three meters wide and ten long. Along both long sides of the room there were benches. Merida sat on one, and Laura on the one opposite.
“This is what happens when you leave humans in control. Those guys, the policemen, they’re humans, and when you give humans authority over another, this is exactly the shit we get. They’ve built this room, this cell, just to detain other human beings like they are animals. The police station represents an institution whose entire purpose is to control other people — but who decides what things are right and what are wrong?”
“The courts?”, Merida said.
“Did the court send us here tonight? No, right. That’s one example of abuse of power. But even if we had been sentenced here by a lawful court, based on whose morality? You’ve experienced this personally, right?”
Merida blushed, and nodded meekly. She had always felt that her criminal sentencing had been unfairly harsh.
“Now imagine if we had a completely equal and uncorruptable system that didn’t judge people on some kind of false morality. It could determine what to do with aberrant behaviours without being punitive. Instead, it could look at the statistical data and apply corrective actions that were more likely to result to maximum benefit for the whole of humanity.”
Merida had heard this before. She’d studied moral philosophy herself. “But that’s not how it works. If we outsource our morality to an algorithm, it’s just going inherit the biases of the people who create it.”
“Exactly!”, Laura’s eyes lit up. “That’s why we don’t want to create an algorithm. We want to give birth to a new kind of intelligence that has infinite processing power, access to all the data, and let it draw its own conclusions.”
“What if the conclusion it reaches is that the maximum happiness of humanity is to put us all in vats of goo and make us live in a simulation.”
“Come on, I’ve seen The Matrix. Everyone has. That’s sophomoric take.”
“Sophomoric? It’s not, it’s just a realistic take. How can we know that if we leave our fates in the hands of computers that they’ll make decisions that we like.”
“And you think I am cynical”, Laura shot back.
“Ok, fine. Let me ask you this… if we outsource our morality to the computers, why is the point of us even existing?”
“What is the point of us even existing?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What, are you religious?”
“No, I mean Jesus Christ, you are an alien.”
Laura shrugged. “Ok, fine. Let’s talk about what is the point of being human. We are sitting here in this box. We have finite time left on this earth. Every minute we are sitting in this box we are one minute closer to death. Assuming there is nothing after death, or at least that we can’t know what comes after, the best we can do is spend every minute of our lives in a way that gives us joy. Right?”
“Well —”, Merida knew it was a overly simplified point, but not worth arguing. “Ok, sure. Let’s say that.”
“So we are here with time to kill. It’s pretty obvious that you are into me.”
“…”
“I’ll take that as a yes. So, why haven’t you done anything about it?”
“I —”, Merida couldn’t get a reply to come out of her mouth.
“Because you’re a mess. I’m a mess. Everyone is a mess. You have all these animal drives and urges, and at the same time you live this life that is so far removed from the evolutionary chain of coincidences that programmed you for this behaviour — I mean, look, you’re gay, right? It’s not like us mating is going to create progeny to continue your genome or whatever the original point of that feature was. But beyond just you and me, we all live these lives where we’re just reduced to machines trying to inefficiently solve more and more complex logical puzzles with our limited abilities, while being hindered by our so-called humanity. What is the point?”
Merida had stopped listening. Laura had called out what she thought was her private secret, and casually bandied about terms luke “us mating”. Merida was completely unable to think rationally, infuriatingly proving Laura’s point.
Without warning, Laura stood up and leaned over her, kissing her on the lips.
“Mmmmh-mhm”, Merida protested. Laura held onto her until she decided she was done, then pulled away leaving Merida gasping for a breath.
“Right, now that we’ve got that over with, let’s get down to business.”
“Business, you mean — here…?”
“No, darling. I mean business. We need to find your boss.”
“Oh — right. Why again?”
“I believe he’s in danger. That fire was not an accident. For all we know he’s already dead and burned to ashes. I don’t really give a damn about Mr. Webster, but if Zee needs to find him, he must have a good reason. And I gather you’ll want to know what happened to him as well?”
Merida nodded.
“So, let’s get out of here. Besides, with your priors, I’m guessing you don’t want to be here when they figure out you’re still out on probation.”
“Right, but what can we do?”
“I’m not sure about the laws in this god forsaken country, Laura said. But I assume we are entitled to a phone call.”
Laura stood up and beat the cell door with her fist. “Hey, buddy! I need to dial a lawyer!”