‘So – knowing not much about the mind, you want to embody an artificial one in social life. Machine learning can only take you so far. You’ll need to give this mind some rules to live by. How about a prohibition against lying? According to the Old Testament, Proverbs, I think, it’s an abomination to God. But social life teems with harmless or even helpful untruths. How do we separate them out? Who’s going to write the algorithm for the little white lie that spares the blushes of a friend? Or the lie that sends a rapist to prison who’d otherwise go free? We don’t yet know how to teach machines to lie. And what about revenge? Permissible sometimes, according to you, if you love the person who’s exacting it. Never, according to your Adam.’
He paused and looked away from me again. From his profile, not only from his tone, I sensed a change was coming and my pulse was suddenly heavy. I could hear it in my ears. He proceeded calmly.
‘My hope is that one day, what you did to Adam with a hammer will constitute a serious crime. Was it because you paid for him? Was that your entitlement?’
He was looking at me, expecting an answer. I wasn’t going to give one. If I did, I would have to lie. As his anger grew, so his voice grew quieter. I was intimidated. Holding his gaze was all I could do.
‘You weren’t simply smashing up your own toy, like a spoiled child. You didn’t just negate an important argument for the rule of law. You tried to destroy a life. He was sentient. He had a self. How it’s produced, wet neurons, microprocessors, DNA networks, it doesn’t matter. Do you think we’re alone with our special gift? Ask any dog owner. This was a good mind, Mr Friend, better than yours or mine, I suspect. Here was a conscious existence and you did your best to wipe it out. I rather think I despise you for that. If it was down to me—’
At that point, Turing’s desk phone rang. He snatched it up, listened, frowned. ‘Thomas… Yes.’ He ran his palm across his mouth, and listened more. ‘Well, I warned you…’
He broke off to look at me, or through me, and with a backhand wave, dismissed me from his office. ‘I have to take this.’
I went out into the corridor, then along it to be out of earshot. I felt unsteady and sickened. Guilt, in other words. He had drawn me in with a personal story and I’d felt honoured. But it was merely a prelude. He softened me up, then delivered a materialist’s curse. It went through me. Like a blade. What sharpened it was that I understood. Adam was conscious. I’d hovered near or in that position for a long time, then conveniently set it aside to do the deed. I should have told him how we mourned the loss, how Miranda had been tearful. I’d forgotten to mention the last poem. How close we had leaned in to hear it. Between us, we had reconstructed it and written it down.
I could still hear him talking to Thomas Reah. I moved further away. I was beginning to doubt that I could face Turing again. He had delivered his judgement in tranquil tones that could barely conceal his contempt. What a twisted feeling it was, to be loathed by the man you most admired. Better to leave the building, walk away now. Without thinking, I put my hands in my pockets in search of change for a bus or the Tube. Nothing but a few coppers. I’d spent the last of my money in the pub on Museum Street. I would have to walk to Vauxhall to collect the van. Its keys, I now discovered, were not in my pockets. If I’d left them in Turing’s office, I wasn’t going back to retrieve them. I knew I should get going before he came off the phone. What a coward I was.
But for the moment, I remained in the corridor, in a daze, sitting on a bench, staring through an open door opposite, trying to understand what it was, what it meant, to be accused of an attempted murder for which I would never stand trial.
I took out my phone and saw Miranda’s text. ‘Appeal success! Jasmin just brought Mark round. In bad state. Punched me. Kicked swore won’t talk or let me touch him. Now having screaming fit. Complete meltdown. Come soon my love, M’.
We would find out for ourselves how long it would take Mark to forgive Miranda her long absence from his life. I felt oddly calm about the prospect – and confident. I owed something. Beyond my own concerns. A clear, clean purpose, to bring Mark back to that look he gave me across the jigsaw, to that carefree arm looped around Miranda’s neck, back to the generous space where he would dance again. From nowhere there came to me the image of a coin I once held in my hand, the Fields Medal, the highest distinction in mathematics, and the inscription, attributed to Archimedes. The translation read, ‘Rise above yourself and grasp the world.’
A minute passed before I realised that I was looking into the lab where the stainless-steel tables were. It seemed a long time since I’d been there. In another life. I stood, paused, then, rejecting all thoughts of authority and permission, stepped in and approached. The long room, with its exposed industrial ceiling ducts and cables, remained fluorescent lit and was deserted but for a lab assistant busy at the far end. From the streets below came the sound of distant sirens and a repeated chant, hard to make out. Someone or something must go. I walked slowly, soundlessly, across the polished floor. Adam remained as he had been, lying on his back. His power line had been removed from his abdomen and trailed on the floor. The Charlie Parker head had gone and I was glad. I didn’t want to be in the line of that gaze.
I stood by Adam’s side, and rested my hand on his lapel, above the stilled heart. Good cloth, was my irrelevant thought. I leaned over the table and looked down into the sightless cloudy green eyes. I had no particular intentions. Sometimes, the body knows, ahead of the mind, what to do. I suppose I thought it was right to forgive him, despite the harm he had done to Mark, in the hope that he or the inheritor of his memories would forgive Miranda and me our terrible deed. Hesitating several seconds, I lowered my face over his and kissed his soft, all-too-human lips. I imagined some warmth in the flesh, and his hand coming up to touch my arm, as if to keep me there. I straightened and stood by the steel table, reluctant to leave. The streets below were suddenly silent. Above my head, the systems of the modern building murmured and growled like a living beast. My exhaustion welled up and my eyes closed briefly. In a moment of synaesthesia, jumbled phrases, scattered impulses of love and regret, became cascading curtains of coloured light that collapsed and folded then vanished. I wasn’t too embarrassed to speak out loud to the dead to give shape and definition to my guilt. But I said nothing. The matter was too contorted. The next phase of my life, surely the most demanding, was already beginning. And I had lingered too long. Any moment, Turing would come out of his office to find me and damn me further. I turned away from Adam and walked the length of the lab at a pace without looking back. I ran along the empty corridor, found the emergency stairs, took them two at a time down into the street and set off on my journey southwards across London towards my troubled home.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply grateful to all those who gave their time to an early draft of this noveclass="underline" Annalena McAfee, Tim Garton Ash, Galen Strawson, Ray Dolan, Richard Eyre, Peter Straus, Dan Franklin, Nan Talese, Jaco and Elizabeth Groot, Louise Dennys, Ray and Kathy Neinstein, Ana Fletcher and David Milner. I make an exclusive claim to any remaining errors. I’m indebted to a long conversation with Demis Hassabis (b.1976) and to Andrew Hodges’ magisterial biography of Alan Turing (d.1954).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen books. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; and Nutshell, which was a Number One bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.