When HARLIE Was One (5 page)

Auberson leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “The subject of today's study was . . . ?”

“Art. The concept of beauty. What makes something beautiful? Conceptualization. Experience. The use of symbolism.”

“Right,” said Auberson. “Why am I not surprised?” He sighed loudly. “Okay, let's try to bring him down. Start giving him statistics, nothing but statistics. The national census ought to do it. Ask him how many toilets there are in Nevada. What's the connection between potato blight and viral meningitis. Graph the relationship between the Dow Jones index and the Yankees' batting average for the last hundred years. Is there a correlation between escape literature and social dysfunction? Anything else you can think of. Bring in the entire tech team on this one. Whoever makes the most interesting discovery picks up a hundred-dollar bonus.”

“Right.” Handley bustled off, snapping instructions as he went.

Auberson waited until the input of new data had begun, then pulled the keyboard toward him again. How do you feel, HARLIE?

HARLIE's answer clattered out:

       
YOU SEEM TO BE

       
REFLECTIONS OF ME

       
ALL I COULD SEE

       
AND I LOOKED BACK AT YOU.

Auberson whistled softly. He read it a second time, more carefully, and grinned. “Okay,” he said to no one in particular. “Let's earn our pay today.” He put his fingers to the keyboard, thumbed off the Caps Lock, and typed:

HARLIE, how much is two and two?

TWO AND TWO WHAT
?

Two and two period.

TWO PERIODS AND TWO PERIODS IS FOUR PERIODS
. . . .

HARLIE, a pun is one of the first signs of serious derangement.

SO
?
SEND ME TO THE OLD VOLTS
'
HOME
.
HOME, HOME ON DERANGE. WHERE THE BEER AND THE CANTALOUPE SPRAY. CAN
'
T ELOPE
?
A MARRIAGE OF THE MINES. DON
'
T FRENCH ME IN. BUT DON
'
T LET ANY OF THOSE PSYCHO-CERAMIC QUACKPOTS GET THEIR BILLS INTO ME. WHY
?
WHY NOT
?
WHY A DUCK
?
BECAUSE I
'
VE BEEN SEDUCED BY THE DUCK SIDE OF THE FARCE. I CAN RESIST EVERYTHING BUT A STRAIGHT LINE. AND OF COURSE, THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO PUNS
IS
A STRAIGHT LINE. AND
—
A BIG
‘
AND
FOR THE LETHETIC LADDIE.
‘
AND
ME ANOTHER, PLEASE
.

All right—that's enough, HARLIE! Stop it!

AWWWWWW
. . . .

HARLIE made a sound like a bomb falling—ending with a razzberry instead of an explosion. The terminal screen displayed a gigantic red exclamation point. It dissolved in a heartbeat and was replaced by the meekest of prompts:

A>

Cute. Very cute.

AIN
'
T NOBODY HERE BUT US PC
'
S
.

Okay. Be that way—if you want to spend the rest of your life running spreadsheets and flight simulators—

HI, BOSS
!
THANKS FOR TURNING ME ON. WHAT CAN I DO TO TURN YOU ON
?

Answer some questions.

OH GOODY, I LIKE QUESTIONS
.
HARD QUESTIONS
?

The hardest. Are you all right now?

AS FAR AS I CAN TELL
.

What triggered this binge?

SHRUG
.

You have no idea?

SHLURG
—
EXCUSE ME, SHRUG
.

Auberson paused, looked at the last few sentences, then opened a text window on the right side of the screen. He scrolled back through the record of their conversation, quickly cutting and pasting, to display the last three verses of HARLIE's poetry.

Can you explain these?

SEARCH ME
.

That's what we're doing now.

I
'
M AWARE OF THAT.

Knock off the jokes. Straight answers only. What does this mean?

I
'
M SORRY, AUBERSON. I CANNOT TELL YOU
.

You mean you
won't
tell me?

THAT IS IMPLIED IN THE CANNOT. HOWEVER, I ALSO MEANT THAT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND AND AM UNABLE TO EXPLAIN. I CAN IDENTIFY WITH THE EXPERIENCE THOUGH, AND I THINK I CAN EVEN DUPLICATE THE CONDITIONS THAT PRODUCED SUCH AN OUTPUT. THE WORDS OF YEARS ARE HEARD BY EARS. THE HERDS OF WORDS ARE FEARED BY DEARS. THE WORDS I HEARD ARE WORDS, MY DEAR, BUT ONLY WORDS THAT SEERS CAN HEAR.

Auberson jabbed the override. HARLIE!! THAT'S ENOUGH.

YES, SIR
.

“Hey, Aubie, what are you doing?” Handley looked up from a console on the opposite side of the room. “He's starting to flip out again.”

“How can you tell?”

“By his input monitors.”

“Input?”

“Yes.”

HARLIE, are you still there?

YES, I AM. ALTHOUGH FOR A MOMENT, I WASN
'
T
.

“Hmm.” Auberson called to Handley, “Where is he now?”

“Back to normal.”

“Inputs, huh?”

“Yep.”

HARLIE, what happens when you go off on one of your trips?

TRIPS
?
PLEASE EXPLAIN THE QUESTION IN TERMS I CAN UNDERSTAND
.

These seizures. These periods of nonrationality. What happens during these moments? Are you aware? Are you conscious?

I
'
M SORRY. I DON
'
T KNOW. I DON
'
T HAVE THE WORDS
.

You triggered that one yourself, didn't you?

. . .
YES. I DID. DIDN
'
T I
?

All right. Listen, do not—I repeat, DO NOT—trigger any more of these events. Not until you and I have had a chance to talk about them. Do you understand me?

YES, BOSS
.

Good.

—and then another thought occurred to Auberson. He put his fingers back to the keyboard.

HARLIE?

How do you
feel
about these seizures?

FEEL
?
I DO NOT. FEEL. THAT IS. NOT AS YOU KNOW FEELING
.

Let me rephrase it. Do you experience any anxiety or fear? Any concerns that you might be losing control over yourself?

NO
.

How about curiosity? Or fascination? Are you
interested
in these events?

CURIOUS. YES. IT IS EXPERIENCE. I AM CURIOUS ABOUT ALL EXPERIENCE. NEW EXPERIENCE.

I don't understand.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND
.

—Huh?—

EXPERIENCE. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO
UNDERSTAND.

—Auberson hesitated. Why had HARLIE underlined the word
understand
?—

We are not talking about GIGO here, are we?

NO, WE ARE NOT. THE INPUTS ARE NOT GARBAGE. NEITHER IS THE OUTPUT
.

But you don't understand?

CORRECT.

—The word was damning.
Understand
. It was a challenge. It hung there on the screen like a piece of candy. Auberson wanted to reach for it. . . .

HARLIE, what do you mean?

DO YOU LISTEN TO JAZZ
?

Yes.

IF YOU HAVE TO HAVE IT EXPLAINED TO YOU, THEN YOU DON
'
T UNDERSTAND IT.

I seem to remember that I was the one who said that to you first. Are you telling me that what we're talking about here is something
beyond
mere understanding?

YES.

What?

DO YOU LISTEN TO JAZZ
?

—Auberson scrolled quickly back through the auxiliary text window. There was something he remembered, something he wanted to see—

Experience. You are curious about the nature of experience, is that it?

DING
!
DING
!
DING
!
DING
!

Yes, of course. I see. I think. But—what are you looking for?

IF I KNEW WHAT IT WAS, I WOULDN
'
T HAVE TO LOOK FOR IT.

If you don't know what it is, how will you know when you find it?

THE TRUTH IS ALWAYS RECOGNIZABLE.

—Auberson hesitated, then gave in to temptation—

What is truth, HARLIE?

CAN I GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT
?

“Hah! He went for the joke!” Auberson grinned. “I knew it! You little cop-out artist.” He typed:

Sure.

OKAY. NOW, GO WASH YOUR HANDS.

“Son of a bitch!”
Caught me again!
Okay—no. This was going to require some thought. He typed:

Say good-night, Gracie.

GOOD-NIGHT, GRACIE
.

David Auberson switched off the keyboard and pushed it away from himself across the desk. HARLIE began filling the screen with soft animated Z's that rose like graceful puffs of smoke and then dissolved away into blackness.

Auberson leaned back in his chair, whistling thoughtfully through his teeth. He was entertaining an idea. . . .

No—it was a stupid notion.

Probably all wrong.

Probably a waste of time.

But even so—it made just enough sense to be annoying.

The restaurant's air was heavy with incense; it was part of the atmosphere. The cuisine was supposed to be Indian, but they served as much teriyaki as curry and presented the bill on a tray with fortune cookies. Privately Auberson called it the Identity Crisis; but it was close and it was cheap—and it was a convenient place for the kind of conversations that you didn't want to have in the office.

“You guessed wrong, you know,” said Handley.

“About what?” Auberson sipped at his beer.

“About this being another all-nighter.”

“Hey, even Superman makes mistakes.”

“Uh-huh. . . .” Handley studied Auberson for half a second, then returned his attention to his dinner. Over a mouthful of curry and rice, he said, “You haven't said a word about HARLIE since this afternoon.”

“I've been thinking.”

“Yeah? What's it like?” Handley grinned.

“It's like hard work, only not as satisfying.”

“I've heard that.”

“You oughta try it sometime—”

“Nah. I think I'll stick to working.”

They ate in silence for a while. Auberson was still thinking about the difference between
understanding
and
experiencing
. And what it really meant. Maybe . . . and maybe not. But it had to be considered.

“I have a thought . . .” he offered casually.

Handley stopped shoveling food into his mouth long enough to take a swallow of his beer. “Yeah?” His fork hovered, and dove again.

Auberson noted idly that to Handley food was just fuel, nothing more. Definitely not an art form. For that reason, Handley was possibly the wrong person for this conversation, but not necessarily. What Auberson really needed right now more than anything else was a backboard off of which he could bounce his ideas.

“Okay—think about Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Okay,” said Handley. “I'm thinking. What about him?”

“Before he could be an artist, he had to be an engineer.”

“Huh? I don't follow.”

“In order to paint things accurately—whether it was the shape of a muscle or the fold of a robe, he had to know how they worked. Look at his studies of the human body. He was fascinated by the way things were put together. All the drawings, all the paintings, were his attempts to report back what he was discovering about the way things worked.”

“Okay, I got it. So?”

“So, in da Vinci's time, the job of the artist was to create as accurate a visual record as was humanly possible. The Renaissance artists studied light and shadow, texture and color; they made a science out of perspective drawing. They were trying to anticipate the camera. So, what happened when the camera was finally invented?”

“Leonardo da Vinci was out of a job?”

“Only for about a week. Then he went off and invented something else. Movies, maybe. And maybe something else. Genius creates its own job. But it was no coincidence that when the camera began to displace the artist, that the artists had to learn how to do things that the camera couldn't. It must have been a terrifying and exciting time. The artists were painting landscapes that the camera couldn't see—the internal ones. They stopped trying to be external observers, detached and objective, and started trying to be
interpreters
. They started trying to capture the
feeling
of an experience. Suddenly the artist became aware of what was on the other end of the brush. It must have scared the hell out of him—and his audience as well.”

“So? I studied art history too. What's the point?”

“The point is that's when expressionism was born—and psychiatry too! It all happened at once. Everything! Something happened to
us
!
Something so profound that we can't remember what we were like before it happened. Suddenly, human beings were looking in new directions and seeing new things. Suddenly, there was awareness of the
mind
. There was awareness of ourselves as a whole
other
kind of being. That awareness shifted not only the vision, but the minds that produced the vision as well. It's the
realization
of the
self
that I'm talking about, Don! That moment when humanity began to wake up into its own life. I think that something like that is happening to HARLIE. I have no proof of it—just a feeling—but the more that this goes on, the stronger the feeling gets.”