Once again, she was the first in the office. What difference did it make if she got two hours of sleep or three? Either way, she was shattered. The sixth question was a pain to figure out at 3:00 a.m., hunched over her laptop on the bed, in the dark because the bulb had blown. When she figured she’d cracked the code, she’d sunk into a fitful sleep, fully clothed.
Tyler had slept through the whole ordeal and was still snoring when she’d showered and disappeared again at six. She might not see him before he left for Brighton. It was sort of like living on her own again. Maybe this was preferable, so that she’d have some quality time with Darcy—if and when she ever got access.
Max appeared in the doorway, which she’d left open to defy seventh-floor convention. His gait projected cheerful purposefulness, but his pallor suggested he’d suffered a long night too. Good. Had he managed to figure out the password? Impossible to tell. Maybe it was other things keeping him up late. She’d Googled him again last night in between questions, but he’d hidden his life so well he must’ve paid someone to bury it. It would be very interesting to know why.
“Hi.” He put down an expensive takeout coffee on his table and took off his coat and scarf. Luckily for him, he didn’t attempt to shut the door, because she’d have told him where to go if he’d tried.
“Hi.” Okay, she’d let him sit down. This was pretty reasonable of her considering she’d been waiting half her life for something like this.
“Where do we enter in the password? Do you know?” she blurted the second his fingers grazed his keyboard. “Why isn’t there an obvious link anywhere? Why does everything have to be so goddamn complicated?”
His expression conveyed a sort of empathy, but this was quickly replaced by his officious manner. “I don’t know. But we should revisit the planning while we wait for further instructions from Harry.”
“I want to see Darcy now. I have the password. Don’t you?”
“I do. God knows, I had to watch that awful 2005 movie until nearly the end. But before you get any romantic notions about this, let me fill you in first on what … who you’ll be meeting.”
She folded her arms. “Hey, I’ve been in this company five years longer than you. We’ve released two AIs already, events in which I was, to some degree, involved. I think I know what we’re talking about. And I don’t have romantic notions.”
“Glad to hear it.” He pointed to Pride and Prejudice lying beside her coffee mug. “I had a chat with the cog-sci guys. Darcy reuses code from predecessors but has a heap of new stuff, too, and to make him sound right, they used an n-gram prediction model, with Good-Turing smoothing, from all the words he speaks in the book. That’s 4,563 I’m told.”
“I knew that,” she said. Chatting to the guys in research? Those guys didn’t chat. Like, ever. And she should know—she’d badgered them for information all last week to no avail. How the heck had he managed it?
“But that wasn’t enough data,” he continued. “So they added a shitload of Internet material—interpretative texts, critiques, movie scripts, and fan blogs, far beyond anything they did for James Bond or Spidey.”
“Well, I don’t think cramming data into a mathematical model will do it. We need to check how his personality manifests itself when interacting with us, and adapt his rules of conduct if he’s not acting as a proper Mr. Darcy should. When I tested the Spidey prototype last year, he had the emotional intelligence of a five-year-old. I warned them, but nobody listened. No wonder he didn’t sell. We’ll have to dig deeper this time.”
His mug froze an inch from his mouth. The stubborn expression he’d pulled out a few times yesterday reappeared in full force. “We’re not changing any code. We test and tweak for performance and reliability and whack it out the door December 15. End of.”
“But what if he’s an idiot?”
He gave her a side glance. “Wasn’t he, in the book? I believe the term was ‘ungentlemanlike’?”
“What? Well … sometimes. But—”
“Well then. He’ll be in character.”
“No! The whole point about Darcy is his hidden character, his true, noble nature.”
“As long as he uses the right vocabulary and has a basic AI sense of right and wrong, what more do you need? The rest you’ll fill in with your imagination anyway.”
“Oooh, is that seriously going to be your approach here? This isn’t an airplane ticket-reservation system. Go back to Tenzhong if that’s what you’re after.”
“Hey. No call for that. It was a warehousing management facilitation system.”
“Just find out where to log in,” she snapped. “We’re already wasting time.”
“Yeah, think I will.” He rose.
“Wait. Where are you going?”
He spread his arms. “Upstairs to the CEO’s office to find out where to log in.”
“I’m coming with you.” She clambered out of her chair.
“Hold your horses. You stay here. He might send the details while I’m gone, in which case you can log in before me.” He gave her a wink that on anyone else might be flirtatious but on him was … just annoying.
“Have it your way.” Truth was, she didn’t want to enter the C-suite in the shadow of Mr. Perfect here, because with his tall frame, his pristine suit, his chiseled … everything, she could only come across as his minion. She’d rather wait until she had something to boast about, until she could shine. Let the smarmy manager go.
He was already gone.
She screeched with delight when about five minutes after his departure Harry’s email came in, bang on eight o’clock, with a clear bullet-point list of instructions on how to retrieve the log-in script. At long bloody last! With shivering fingers, she typed in the password.
It worked. The first time. “Yes, yes, yes,” she sang and bit into her knuckles. The screen turned black as something seemed to be loading up.
“Oh yeah?” a voice came from the door. Max sauntered in. His taut face cracked into a genuine smile, the first she’d seen, all healthy teeth and life sparkling in the eyes. What a transformation. For a fleeting moment he looked attractive. Seriously attractive. Something sad and lonely clenched deep inside her chest.
Then, with an impertinent beep, her screen flickered to life and a computer graphics face appeared. A noble face with dark sideburns. Her hand slapped to her mouth. “An avatar! They didn’t say anything about an avatar. Spidey didn’t have an avatar. Did you know there was an avatar?”
“Nope.”
“Wow, he’s … he’s … ”
“A bit waxy looking?” Max rolled his chair closer to her side.
“No.” She cocked her head. “I think he’s nice.”
Max’s mouth was close to her ear. “Good, you’re going to be staring at him for the next ten weeks. If you don’t hate him by then, I’ll question your humanity.”
She gave him a snide glance whereupon he removed his head from her personal space. His soapy scent lingered there, mixed in with that aftershave. Since when did men smell so good?
She turned back to Darcy. A realistic talking head, vector graphics with expert shading and skin texturing … holy schmackerel. Late twenties—hard to tell with a wrinkle-free avatar—a stern, but one could say ardent, expression on his side-burned face. Austen fans would approve. In fact, this guy would put to rest all the tedious debate over which Darcy movie actor was more scrumptious, because he was the perfect hybrid of them all.
“Not bad,” she said.
“Wait’ll he starts talking.”
God, yeah. She typed rapidly into the chat box.
“Good morning,” the computer’s audio rang out—a commanding baritone in perfect synchronization with the avatar’s mouth. He caught her with full on, flashing brown eye contact. “Miss Bunsen and … Mr. Taggart, if I am not mistaken.”
“Whoa!” They flinched back from the screen in unison. Her gaze locked with Max’s. His expression was open, eyebrows raised, mouth slack. Had he finally realized what it was they were dealing with here?
“The team over at Tricon-4 did the graphics. Guy called Matt Hill did the micro-expressions,” Max whispered. He cleared his throat. “I-I don’t know why I’m whispering.”
“I know,” she whispered back. She straightened, imagining herself strapped in a corset. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Darcy.”
“Yes, I am indeed Fitzwilliam Darcy. Pardon me for introducing myself to you in this forward manner.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Darcy.”
“He aced the facial recognition,” Max said. “That’s how he knew it was us. He matched our faces with the staff database photos. Though it could also have been speaker identification.”
“Indeed.” Darcy’s voice held an unmistakable note of pride. “The facial recognition algorithm returned a score of 97.8 percent probability on you, Mr. Taggart. Speech biometrics returned a 93-percent match.” With this, he twisted his head a few degrees to the left to focus on Max.
Max jotted something down on his tablet, fully recovered from his momentary lapse into awe. “Okay, when you say speech biometrics—”
“Mr. Darcy,” Zoe interrupted. “Welcome to the twenty-first century in which you suddenly find yourself. I trust you are overwhelmed by the sensations of this world, which must be so different to your own?”
Darcy inclined his head slightly. “I appreciate the sentiment, Miss Bunsen.” His head swiveled to Max. “Pray, Mr. Taggart, what were you going to say?”
Max laughed. “I like him already. ’S okay, Darcy. She’s doing the talking.”
In the long silence that followed, the AI seemed to be awaiting a response, twisting his head from one human to the other, tennis-match style. He was acting like every other helpful user interface the world over. Not a hint of haughtiness. She was starting to feel the first twinges of disappointment.
“So, are you really the fictional character created by Jane Austen?” she asked.
“No.” His dark eyes appeared to flash, or maybe it was her imagination wishing it so. “I am nonfictional.”
“How do you mean, nonfictional?”
“Have you heard of mind-mapping technology?” Darcy asked.
“Sort of.”
“Can we assume that a person’s mind can be mapped in its entirety to the degree that somebody interacting with a computer would be unable to distinguish the simulation from the real person?”
“Ah, so you’re a simulation?” Zoe looked knowingly at Max, who merely shook his head in silence.
“Please bear with me,” Darcy said coolly. “If they mapped your mind into a model after you died, would you care what happened to it?”
“After I died? Well, the old me wouldn’t care. The old me wouldn’t know—I’d be dead. But the new, artificial me would care … about itself, if it really were the new me, that is, as in fully conscious, self-aware. Where’s this going?”
“If the so-called new you were told you were fictional, based on a fictional character, and hence, in a sense, not real, the new you would take offense, would you not?”
“Yes, probably. But I could prove that Zoe Bunsen did exist once. I could find records, visit the grave, etc.”
“You could do those things,” Darcy continued. “But proving this would not change your personality, your reflexes, insecurities, emotional makeup, memories, biases, fallibilities, prejudices, and base drives? Everything essential that makes you, you.”
“No, I’d still be me.”
“As I am Fitzwilliam Darcy. I exist, I am real, therefore I am nonfictional. To answer your original question, I am not the fictional character created by Jane Austen.”
“Oh. My apologies. But you’re not human either, are you?” She may have had too little sleep for a metaphysical analysis, but it was probably best to get this one straightened out from the start.
“I do not strive to prove that I am human. But merely to prove that I am real.”
“I can live with that.” Zoe jotted this down on her notepad. “But how can you be sure that you’re not, say, Mr. Bingley?”
“I am not Bingley, although he is a good friend of mine.”
“Of course. That’s why you advised him not to marry Jane Bennet, his true love. Remember that? Or hasn’t it happened yet?” It didn’t matter how many times she read the book, she couldn’t quite forgive him for this.
“It happened.”
“So are you married to Elizabeth? Surely that’d complicate any interactions you’re supposed to be having with your female users?”
“No. Elizabeth is dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” So, they’d programmed all that into his model of reality. Interesting. Those research guys must’ve had fun. She would never be able to recreate the kind of love the real Darcy had embodied for his Elizabeth, but if a fraction of it were somehow represented in this program, it should be respected, especially the idea that those lovers were now parted by death. She reached over to caress her copy of P&P, which lay on the desk since Max had given it back to her yesterday.
“This book”—she held it up to the laptop camera so there could be no misapprehension—“is my bible. When I’m tired or distressed after work, when my family calls me to discuss my inevitable move back home, when friends are thin on the ground, when spinsterhood seems inevitable, I curl up with it, and even though I’ve read it a million times, I never fail to worry that you and Lizzie won’t get together, and I breathe a sigh of contentment when she admits her true feelings for you at the end. Crazy, isn’t it? And I know that women down the generations have done the same thing. Darcy, if we’re to conquer the world together, you need to be this Darcy. Do you understand me?”
“Does your family try to control you?” Darcy asked.
“What?”
“That’s what you got from that?” Max asked.
“I inferred from your speech,” Darcy said, “that your family attempts to control you. I find the notion intriguing.”
She recoiled. Both men—the human and the humanoid—were watching her like hawks. “My … my family has nothing to do with this.”
“Family has everything to do with this,” the AI said. “The life of a lady is almost solely dependent on the situation of her family.”
Blood thumped in her ears. “Not these days. They’ve no hold over me, not even remote control. They never will. Nobody tells me what to do.” Her attention wandered involuntarily over to Max, whose gaze flickered off her face.
“It’s the twenty-first century,” she insisted. “And thank Christ for that.”
“Indeed.” Darcy harrumphed.
“Can I swear in front of him? No, I’m not supposed to do that.”
“Course you can,” Max said. “Nobody tells you what to do.”
She ignored him.
Max leaned in closer to the screen. “Mr. Darcy, do you know who we are and what our expectations of you are?”
“I gather that I am to be a useful companion.”
“Correct. In our world you’re called an AI. Is that term familiar to you?”
“It is.”
“Your role will be to help your user—that is, the owner of the device that runs you, which currently means Zoe and me. But after you’re released, thousands of different people who are not half as nice as Zoe may run you on their machines and ask you to do menial things like order pizza and find the local pharmacy. Do you have any problem with any of this?”
“Do you have to?” Zoe protested, pushing his upper arm. Did he just call her nice?
His eyes fixated on her fingers resting on his biceps. “I’m sorry, did you want to natter all day about existentialism?”
She whipped back her hand. “No, but, well … ”
“We’ve ten weeks.” Max wheeled his chair backward, absently brushing his fingers over that part of his arm. “Make every second count.”
“Yes. And introductions are extremely important. How are you going to like him if you don’t set up some conversational rapport here?”
“Conversational rapport? Don’t you know that mind-map stuff was just a script he rattled off, some cog-sci guys playing Jean-Paul Sartre? And, no, I don’t have to like him.”
“How can you even say that? He’s sitting right there.” Zoe held the frame of her monitor on both sides in a symbolic cyber hug. “I do apologize, Darcy. My esteemed colleague is feeling the pressure of a deadline and seems to want to reduce you to the status of a pocket calculator in his eagerness to win brownie points from our superiors.”
“Apology is not necessary, Miss Bunsen. The word ‘intelligent’ is applied to many an entity that deserves it no otherwise than by repeating a set of facts stored in a database. Mr. Taggart, I perceive, is not yet convinced that I differ significantly from such primitive programs to which he has heretofore been exposed.”
She swiveled to give Max a triumphant smile.
Max leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “Uh-huh. It’s still a script.”
She tried to soften her voice. “Max, if this is going to work at all, you’re going to have to let yourself go a bit and imagine that there’s something going on up there in his head. It might help to actually think of him as a real person.”
“All right then. Asking about your family. Isn’t that how a real, nineteenth-century gentleman would behave?”
“Indeed.” Darcy gave a solemn nod.
She frowned at each in turn. “Yes, but, come on, family? It’s inappropriate for the twenty-first century. Users would just end up switching him off.”
“Aha.” Max rose and paced the room as if he were Sherlock Holmes unraveling a dastardly clue. “So we get to cherry-pick the characteristics that suit us and dump those that don’t. Sorry, Darcy,” he called over to her screen. “Consistency of character is underrated these days.”
“That is regrettable,” Darcy said.
“He’s a nineteenth-century man in a twenty-first-century world with a brain full of inherited Spiderman reflexes,” she said crossly. “Of course he needs some adaptation.”
Max gathered his phone and a tablet from his desk. “Ah, not perfect then?”
Darcy, she noticed, had nothing to offer in his defense.
“Not quite.” She aimed her snootiest look at Max to extinguish the mischief sparkling in his eyes, but it didn’t seem to be working.
“Much as I’m intrigued, I’ve a meeting to get to. Let’s debrief after lunch.”
“Yes, yes.” Debrief. Nice. When was she going to be invited to one of these meetings he kept sneaking off to? “Look,” she said to his retreating back as he exited the office, “I’m not aiming for perfection, just a companion I can live with without wanting to switch him off.”
He poked his head around the door again. “Well. Glad we got that one sorted out.”