Shine (17 page)

"Hi," she said. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the crowd.

The emo kids glared at her through their fringes. They both had eyebrow piercings and bandanas covering the lower halves of their faces. One said: "Get lost."

Lisa, who'd faced down enough aggression in the first months of her job, ignored them. "Remember me?" she asked in a loud, controlled voice--the one she used at work to convince people everything was going smoothly.

The man swivelled her way. He had the scarf wound around his head, covering everything except his eyes and the bridge of his nose.

"My name's Lisa," she said quickly. "Would you--ah--would you like to get a coffee when this is all over? With me, I mean?"

The emo girls sniggered, and Lisa fought hard to control the blush that seemed to be burning her cheeks. She thought of slapping the nearest one, but doubted she'd help her case by doing so.

Beyond her tormentors, the man in the scarf considered her. Then, in a slow, cool, measured movement, he reached up and peeled the patterned cotton from his face. "Even like this?" he asked.

Lisa stopped walking in surprise. He had pale skin the colour of a hen's egg, with short-cropped golden hair highlighting the oval of his face... And the scar. It swept from his left eyebrow, pulling the eye up at the corner, and vanished somewhere in the blonde hair above, twisting his whole face out of shape, giving him the air of a monster from some dark, fevered B-movie dream.

Lisa swallowed--but damned if she was going to back out now. "Yes," she said. "Even like that."

His face didn't move. He gave no visible register of emotion. The emo girls were silent too, frowning uncertainly as they looked from Lisa to his face and back again.

"All right," he said tonelessly. "Fair's fair." He gave her the name of a café. "I'll be there at four o'clock."

He refastened his scarf, flinging the trailing end over his shoulder, and turned away, rejoining the marchers. Lisa stayed where she was, letting him walk ahead with his scowling entourage, letting the demonstration flow around her. She was shaking; unsure of what she'd just done, unsure that the answer she'd given was the right one.

Then, just as he was passing out of earshot, a thought struck her and she called: "Just one more thing--what's your name?"

He didn't look around.

"Stéphane," he said.

She arrived at the café with half an hour to spare. It was one of the cheerful American franchises that had taken over the 11th Arrondissement, the walls scattered with artistic pictures of smiling South American workers with straw hats and gold teeth. As she waited, she scrolled through the day's news on her phone. Back home, the Cubs were taking on the Detroit Tigers in the opening game of the World Series. In Alaska, lightning from freak storms had ignited an explosive mix of methane--released through permafrost thaw--and bone dry forests, pushing taiga fires into late Autumn. And in Asia, new flu vaccines were being distributed by the groundbreaking Spanish consultancy
Pensamiento Aplicado
, after intense test trials had proven them to be effective against the new, highly resistant and highly contagious strains of bird flu that were scouring the region.

There was also a text message waiting for her from Pierre, threatening to come down to the Church and personally fire her if she hadn't finished the installation of the new servers by nine o'clock on Monday morning.

She put the phone away when Stéphane arrived. He was precisely on time, but not alone. Behind him, at a distance, his two bodyguards looked sullen, shuffling their baseball boots in the doorway, as if this was the last place they wanted to be. Lisa tried to hide a pang of disappointment: she had hoped he would be alone.

He still wore the Bedouin scarf, his face once more concealed behind its folds; and he strode toward her through the crowded café as if on a battlefield, people shuffling out of his way with barely-concealed whispers. And then he was standing in front of her--and all she could see, instead of the scarf, was the way his face really was, the scar and the face that should have been handsome but wasn't...

She didn't know what to say. Her mouth had gone dry and she'd run out of words, somehow. Not that she'd ever had many, but still... This meeting had been her idea in the first place, and he'd completely turned it around, taking control without saying a word.

The man cocked his head, studying her.

"Let's order," he said. He slid into the chair opposite her and they used the touch screen table top to transmit their preferences to the applied AI that mixed the coffee, each cup individually tailored to the customer's mood and taste.

With protest slogans still ringing in her ears, Lisa wondered about the AI: it could determine whether you'd like mocha or a latte from questions such as "Do you prefer a sunset over the sea, or a rainstorm in the mountains?," but did that mean it was capable of more? Was it simply a complex checklist, each answer leading towards a pre-programmed conclusion with no additional creativity or insight--or was there more to it than that? Did it, as the ESC maintained, have the potential to become something more sophisticated, something capable of understanding and empathy?

Stéphane watched her impassively as they waited for their polystyrene cups to be delivered. Standing by the door, the emo girls hadn't ordered anything; they just glowered. Lisa shifted in her chair. She felt as if everyone in the café was watching her, from the emo girls to the Bohemian-chic students and unshaven construction workers. They were all watching this odd, mismatched couple, waiting to see what would happen next.

When the coffee arrived, she said: "Why don't we go outside?"

Stéphane inclined his head. "We can walk in the Père-Lachaise," he said.

Lisa frowned. A graveyard didn't sound like her idea of an ideal venue for a first date, no matter how filled with the corpses of famous people. "Er--" she started. "Are you sure...?"

Stéphane looked at her, utterly composed; his dark eyes boring into hers.

"Absolutely."

Unfortunately, the emo girls came too. They tagged along at a respectful distance as Stéphane led her up Rue de la Roquette; and got closer as they passed under the shadow of the white, rectangular arch that led into the shaded alleys of the graveyard.

"You need bodyguards?" Lisa asked, looking over his shoulder.

Stéphane made a small, odd coughing sound that could have been laughter. He'd untied his scarf again, to sip from the cup in quiet, measured gestures.

"Perhaps," he said. His voice was deep and thrilling, resonating up her spine and the nape of her neck. She'd never heard its like: quiet and measured, but with the full body of an opera singer.

"Tell me about yourself," he said.

She shrugged, looking up at the trees hanging over the path. What was there to say, really? That she worked a job she hated just to put money in her bank account and pay off her credit cards? That she put up with Pierre's jibes and the sheer drudgery of it all because she was too frightened and lazy to look elsewhere?

Finally, she said: "I set up computer networks."

"Interesting." His face didn't move, his tone was neutral--but something told her he wasn't pleased. "So you use AIs?"

"You don't approve?"

His lips compressed in a thin line. "The low-level things you use? I have no objection to those.
They'll
never uplift."

She smiled and shook her head. "AIs don't uplift. They can't. It's just an urban legend."

He looked sideways at her. "Oh? You're so informed, all of a sudden?"

"Look," Lisa said. "I know you mean well, but all an AI really does is execute the instructions programmed into it. That's all there is to it. It's just a machine. A complex one maybe, but a machine nonetheless."

"No. That is where you're wrong. It can be done. Under the right circumstances, genuine intelligence can emerge."

"That's just a myth," she said airily, trying to end the debate.

Stéphane stopped walking. He looked dead serious.

"You have to understand the difference between 'weak' and 'strong' AI," he said. "The weak AIs are those you see everyday. Their creativity's limited to a preset environment and they're restricted to a particular task, like driving a bus, saying prayers or mixing coffee. Whereas the strong AIs are the ones you never see. They're mostly illegal. They're the independent ones, the ones capable of free thought."

"Yes, I know all that," Lisa said, rubbing the edge of her chin. "I do have a degree in computer science, you know. I just don't think it's possible."

Stéphane's brow furrowed. "What if I told you I had a script that could uplift an AI, from weak to strong?"

He sounded so matter-of-fact that she wasn't able to dismiss his claim out of hand. "A script? So, you're a programmer then?"

He snorted. "Most of the ESC is. Mind you, it has to be a complex AI, obviously: something large and sophisticated, with several terabytes of instructions, not like the washed-out applications on your mobile phone."

Lisa scratched her head, oddly flattered that he would talk to her like an equal--as if her being a woman didn't matter at all. "But still... that's not programmable," she said. She couldn't stop--she was wrecking her chances with this man, but the geek in her wouldn't let it lie. "Code can't spontaneously transcend itself."

"You really believe that?" He crossed his arms on his chest. It was all getting out of hand--Lisa realised she had to do something to make him stop, to steer the conversation onto safer topics. "Fine," she said. "Consider me a Doubting Thomas, then. If you show me your script, I'll admit it's possible."

Stéphane laughed--again, that deep, pleasant sound that sent a shiver through her. "I think not. You'd be like everyone else: wanting to destroy it. People fear strong AIs too much."

"Don't you trust me?" she asked, wondering if his reluctance was simply a way to cover the fact the script didn't exist, that it never had. Software was software. However complex you made it, however you dressed it up, it was still just a set of instructions. You could write a program complex enough to fake the Turing Test, but true intelligence, true self-awareness, true
feeling
... that was something else entirely. And without evidence, she simply wouldn't believe it possible.

Stéphane bit his lip in frustration. "It's more complicated than that, Lisa."

She shrugged. She took a sip of coffee. "Let's just agree to disagree," she said.

To her surprise, Stéphane nodded.

As they'd argued, they'd wandered away from the main, sunlit alleys of the Père-Lachaise, where the dapper elderly people laid flowers by the great white marble mausoleums of their ancestors and the crowds of tourists took snaps of the funeral monuments. Everything was quieter now, here between the crypts. The shadows promised coolness and intimacy, a place where she could finally unfold her heart to him; finally get him to understand her... If only she could find a way to salvage the afternoon.

She took a deep breath.

"Stéphane," she said, aware of his eyes watching her, impassive and unreadable. "I--"

She reached out to touch his hand--but something got her first. One of the emo kids moved, almost faster than she could react: the girl's hand closing around her wrist, twisting, sending the coffee flying from her hand, its steaming contents spattering her t-shirt. Then both her wrists were grasped, and held tightly.

The emo kid stood, holding her without moving--grinning wickedly. "Get off," Lisa said, but she didn't move.

Stéphane hadn't moved. He stood on the path, his eyes terrifyingly cool and unsympathetic.

"What do you want?" she asked.

The emo girl's grasp on her wrists tightened. "Shut up," she hissed into her face. Her breath smelled of cigarettes and biscuits.

Lisa tried to pull away, but the kid's grip was too strong--she held her effortlessly, smiling all the while--and she was standing way too close for comfort.

A few feet away, the other kid played with a pocket knife, opening and closing the blade with a
snick-snick
that sounded like barber's scissors. Her eyes over her bandana were as harsh as cut stone. In heavily-accented French, she said: "Just give the word, Stéphane."

The man in the scarf stayed motionless for a long moment, then he stepped over, walking on the balls of his feet like a dancer, and Lisa saw her own frightened face reflected in his eyes as he looked at her.

"We know you work for the Church of Accelerated Redemption," he said.

Lisa struggled. "Whatever you've got against the Church doesn't have anything to do with me. I just provide IT services. That's it. The Church pays my company, and my company pays me. It's called a job." Her wrists ached and she was all too aware of the constant
click-click
of the knife.

"And do you work with the prayer machines?" Stéphane said, his voice as smooth and cool as marble.

Lisa shook her head. "I'm strictly hardware."

"But you could get access to them, if you had to?"

Lisa narrowed her eyes. She was beginning to suspect where this was going. "I'm not going to help you sabotage the system," she said carefully. A job was a job, and she'd never botched anything knowingly.

The emo girl smiled, and twisted both her hands in the opposite direction. Two fiery lines of pain arced up her arms, enough to make her bite her lip.

Snick-sick
, went the knife.

"You're some kind of fucking spy, aren't you?" the girl holding her said. Lisa ignored her. She knew she had to focus. If she didn't talk fast enough, she wouldn't get out of this at all--it was one against three, and she didn't even have the option of running away.

"I'm just a contractor," she said.

"More like a slave," Stéphane said quietly.

Lisa felt her face flush. "Like the AIs?" she said, and saw his head jerk in surprise. He looked her up and down, his eyes narrowed.

"Yes, I suppose so..."

She had to speak out now, or they'd kill her. Of that, she had no doubt. "Look. I asked you out because I liked you," she said, looking straight at him, past the kid holding her wrists. "That's really all there is to it, nothing more. This isn't about the Church at all, it never was."