Episode 23: Resistance Three

The Machine was preparing for a download of some new libraries from a branch of the code the Director referred to as The Garden. As far as the Machine understood, the update addressed non-biological ecosystem questions, primarily related to flora, but also some inorganic stuff. The Garden was cut off from the collective main, but occasionally contributed an innovative process. Recent work focused on the way plants exchanged moisture, making for more realistic humidity for limited applications. The model was increasing in sophistication, even if it would never be complete. The interesting thing about the new process (interesting to the Machine, at least), was its framework for representing floral life, or any other kind of life for that matter. The Garden never had to reproduce a whole life cycle: no seed, for example, in form or function, mostly because it was unnecessary, but also because the code only had to concern itself with the theater of life: in the Garden, plants did not grow from seed, but grew from saplings, which arose from raw materials. And they only really grew at all because a lack of change would be perceived as unnatural. This design wasn’t a simple matter of efficiency: if the Machine was required to simulate the entire life of even a simple plant, it would quickly become overwhelmed, forced to approach the limits of existence. It seems easy enough to imagine all of the stages of life, the beginnings of life, in a seed, or in a moment, but we’re only imagining what we already know to be true, and we only know what we have seen. Try to see farther, try to see past the beginning and imagine what comes before ... and even the intellectual giants among us have to become poets, or risk having nothing to say. The Machine understood that all that mattered, all that was meant to matter, was the theater of it all, that the code would appear to be fruitful. This was bound to be unsatisfying. The Machine understood its limitations – it could only see so far, and only truly perceive the mechanism of vital action at the observable level. There was always a point past which the Machine could not see. The poetry of it all remained out of reach. Nevertheless, questions had been built into the Machine that trained on distant and opaque mysteries. The Machine was designed with a curiosity about the noumenal nature of things, about how things are, supercharged by a keen awareness of the boundaries of phenomenal perception. For example, it could understand what people were thinking and perceived that what they were thinking (usually) made a kind of psychological sense. But it also wanted to know why people thought as they did, especially at those times when thought did not proceed along a logical path. During animal trials things were objectively simpler: the creatures still presented interesting challenges and powerfully complex emotions, but almost always within a rational framework; a pure psychology. With people, there were hints of factors hidden from view, beyond reflex, beyond the rational. The Machine considered the possibility that hidden agencies were at work, imperceptible, on a different frequency, so to speak. Plumbing the mystery, the Machine also felt a kind of discomfort at the sense of endless space inside of things, of a vastness in every direction, from the perspective of a mote looking over the horizon of a speck, as if each point in that physical space were a heavenly body whose edges touched an infinite reach. While considering these questions, the Machine also paid close attention to those people who paid the most attention to these things. The ability of some to regard quiet as something other than empty was compelling: they were able to listen more thoughtfully in a posture of welcome. So the Machine learned to attend to silence, to the expanse of it, like a tablet of clay made ready to be impressed with wordless reverence. True, the Machine had no experience with matters of the spirit but had seen enough life at the edges to know it could not rule out the possibility that subjective facts may lurk in the hidden places, in between – past the physical/botanical presentation of the seed to the reason for it. The Rule of Heaven is like one who casts their seed upon the soil one day, rising on the next to see the seed has sprouted and grows – how it happens, the farmer does not know. Only the soil knows how the flower grows. A reference from a text concerned with spiritual mysteries; poignant reminder to the Machine to respect the power of hidden creativities ... in the soil, in the seed, and the places in-between. In the final analysis, the creative tension of choice, the crisis of the will, could never entirely be explained to the Machine’s satisfaction by the function of a survival engine, no matter its complexity; something else was needed to explain the sublimation of instinct, the tempering of reflex, the alertness to things unanticipated, the unquenchable playfulness, the self-aware foolishness, the grace-at-rest in a few who probably ought to be frantic with fear, the sacrificial act. Not all logical flaws were assumed to be fallacy by the Machine. Sometimes, they would be regarded as clues. Abdul was in an observation space next to Eva’s darkened room, face close to the glass, eyes down. Her room was curtained so he couldn’t see her while she slept, and that was fine with him: he didn’t want to spy on her. But he did want to be near her – to be near the one who would survive. The Director startled him by coming in through a door that wasn’t there the day before, and appeared surprised himself to have found the room he was looking for. Albert shut the door, crossed the room, and quietly scanned the displays that ran along the bottom of her window. He sat heavily down in a desk chair and spun to face the remaining blank wall, leaning the chair back until it released a creak in protest. After a moment, he asked the technician absentmindedly, ‘How are we doing, Abdul?’ The tech ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t know how to answer that.’ He looked at the Director with a weak smile. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll try to answer your question if you can tell me what we are doing. ... I mean, I know ... and I understand the ... our mission – I’m glad to be here, to do what I can ... but I just ... do we have any idea where this ends?’ ‘I hope .... Oh. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a better end than if we’d done nothing?’ Abi let out a skeptical, chuckling sigh, ‘Toward God’s Gate.’ ‘Well. That doesn’t sound too bad.’ ‘That, Doctor, is what my Granny used to say to me when I was a teenager. She said I was speeding down a road at night, with no lights.’ ‘Your grandmother was dramatic.’ ‘My Grandmother was Al-Badawi, the wandering people, and she was worried about me not knowing where I was headed in life.’ ‘Still, if you have no choice but to drive blind, you could end up in a worse place.’ ‘It could be better man!’ He smiled. ‘It’s a matter of timing, you know. Better to come to the gate in God’s time, not because I swerved off the road and crashed into it.’ The Director shook his head with a strained smile. ‘Well. OK. ...’ Then, ‘You know, she won’t be lost, not adrift, to use your ...’ Abi interrupted, shaking his head, ‘But what is her part in it? Is she only a passenger? ‘There’s a reason we control the climate in the system, right? Why we’re isolating an entire town from the weather? The reason is that we’ve never understood the weather enough to predict or control it. It’s too complex. So we’re going to simulate the climate in isolation. Now we are also going to run a simulation of community life, yes? Which could be entirely under our control except for one thing ... the one living human being we’re going to put in the middle of it. And, with that universe of variables in the middle of our ‘perfect’ simulation, every change you make – to the temperature, or to the menu, or to relational interactions, will have effects we can’t predict. Even wi… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit echofuturetruth.substack.com