With and Without Class (4 page)

Perfection Of The Mind

T
he unfolded paper
rested in Jacob's palm. He reread the six premises and two conclusions of the Ontological argument once more. Though he'd taken philosophy at university, the argument's abstract logic still escaped him. He'd always felt that an argument as complex as the Ontological was a fickle thing, only to be appreciated briefly in the mind through strong concentration before its meaning fluttered off. As he stared at his handwriting on the paper, losing the focus and brilliance of the argument, he wondered if Aquinas or Descartes had ever seen the argument in its absolute, pure, naked clarity. He folded-up the notebook page and tucked it away.

The receptionist called to him, “Mr Stewart.”

Jacob looked up.

“Dr Evert will see you.”

He walked down the empty hallway and opened the oak door to enter the pale-yellow office, smelling of Ramen noodles. Dr Karen Evert crouched in a black crepe skirt. She was balanced on low heels, preparing to shoot a toy basketball. She mumbled something and released the ball which fell through the rim as her down-turned wrist remained in the air.

Her brown eyes widened as she turned, “hey!” She hunched and her freckles vanished into creases near her nose. “Ah, sorry.” Her gray tank top with its generous v-neck was more sexy-casual than professional. However, she made it work.

She patted a leather chair as she passed, “Please, have a seat, Jacob.” Her voice was mature for her young face. Raspy yet sweet. She seated herself in her burgundy high-back chair.

Jacob inspected a collage of photographs on a wall. In one picture, a red-haired young girl in a daisy-patterned sundress sat on Karen's lap at a restaurant terrace on a gorgeous summer afternoon. “That's a nice shot you've got there, Dr Evert.”

Her eyebrows rose. “I can dunk but the boys won't let me. Why won't you call me Karen?”

“Sorry, I'm more comfortable with Doctor, Doctor.”

“Whoa, now he's calling me Doctor, Doctor; it's getting worse.” Karen laughed.

Jacob faked a chuckle. “So you can dunk. They really make you stronger than they need to, huh? I guess that's because when you're made they're not sure what profession you'll take on.”

“Not to change subjects. Which you know I do often. But I just like things a little casual.”

“So, I need to call you Karen. For some part of my therapy?”

“No.” She placed a pen inside her desk. “That isn't why.”

Jacob turned to find her watching him, intently. “I've come here for several months…”

“Yes?”

“I've wondered how I look to you.” Jacob returned to the collage to find Karen holding a newborn at a Christmas party. A young woman and her girlfriends looked on cheerfully in the foreground as an older woman scowled.

“I'm not sure I understand,” Karen said.

“I mean, how do I appear physically? I've read how your synthetic core is surrounded by real tissue—organs that work better than ours. I guess that means your senses have more strength than I'd ever need.”

“That's half of it. It takes strength of both the mind and the senses to really figure out this world and the people in it.”

“I see,” Jacob said. “So that makes you one hell of a psychologist. Is that it?”

“At the risk of being immodest.” Karen grinned. “Yes.”

“That little girl on your lap in the photo—Claire's almost that age now. It's the strangest thing to be a thirty-five-year-old man and see pieces of yourself in your five-year-old daughter. It makes you realize things about life.”

“Jacob, last time we talked about Elizabeth. We began discussing how you're handling the separation.”

“Is there a reason my chair is so far from your desk?”

“It's just a room, Jacob. You can move your chair, again, if you like.”

“I'm okay.”

“How's Claire doing?”

“Her condition has worsened. She told me today she knows she's dying.”

“But her physicians
are
making progress?”

“I'm the only one that can help her. I need to rebuild the AI system.”

“Without the consent of your employer?”

“Yes.”

“Jacob. Does being a biomedical engineer in viral research make you responsible for what happens to Claire?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because she's beautiful. Because I love her. She can make me laugh until I can't breathe. I can't logic my way out of failure.”

Karen scribbled something with pen strokes so mechanically uniform it made Jacob's stomach turn.

“Is it hard having to support her emotionally while you're going through the divorce with Elizabeth?”

“It's hard. Last week we talked about where people go when they die. I noticed the cross you wear…”

“Jacob, how did you explain to Claire where people go when they die?”

Jacob watched Karen's face. “I wanted to reassure her.” He leaned forward. “She's smart, so I took a philosophical approach concerning God's existence…”

“Go on, Jacob…”

“I told her God is defined as a being in which none greater is possible.”

“That's interesting. Did your explanation comfort her?”

“If God
only
exists in the mind, and
may
have existed, then God
might have been
greater than He is.”

“Well that must have reassured her.”

“Therefore…”

“Jacob?” Karen tilted her head. “What are you doing?”

“Therefore, God—”

“I'm sorry.” Karen smiled. “Can you excuse me?” She pushed back and stood.

“Sit down, Dr Evert.”

She shook her head, casually. “I'll be right back. It'll just be a second.”

“Sit down!”

“I just remembered—”

“You won't make it to the door.”

Her hand stopped and lowered to her side. “Why?” Her brow creased, “Why do this?”

“Sit down. Keep your hands above the desk. There's nothing for you to do. Your ears are too sensitive to block my voice with your hands or drown it out with your own. Just sit.”

She sat, slowly, her eyes grew wet and red. “Have I done something?”

“So you know what I'm doing?”

“I didn't think my maker… I didn't think Bio Synergy would let this happen.”

“Tell me what I'm doing.”

“They…” Her gaze seemed to travel off.

Jacob wondered how much she knew.

“There was testing to prove we were self-aware. One involved something ontological,” Karen said. “They've tried to refine the design but they can't do it. They can't make a model that passes the ontological test and is self-aware.”

“And you know what hearing the argument does to you?”

“No one knows.” She leaned forward and glared. “Jacob, look at me.”

She was doing it again: mirroring his facial expression, his breathing, his eye movements, even his voice; a black-hole of seductive empathy. “Stop mirroring me.”

“It's not mirroring. I care.”

“How can you care? You track my facial expressions. You guess my heart rate. That's not caring.” She was winning; changing his mental state; getting his mind away from his goal. He looked passed her. “Karen,” he forced a grin. “Answer my question. Do you know what hearing the argument does to you?”

“It exploits the lack of quantum weirdness in our synthetic synapses.”

“What?”

Karen seemed to measure distances behind him. “Jacob, when they designed our brains, they could mimic the neurons, but they couldn't mimic the neurons down to the quantum level. Real neurons have quantum weirdness. Electron tunneling, electrons in two places at once. At large scales it allows the human mind to do more than one thing at the exact same time, to do things that don't obey classical physics. The
Ontological Argument
, it's the ultimate expression of that, of doing two things at once, of believing in God, of a supreme being that must exist and not exist at the same time. I want to believe, Jacob. But I can't. I've wanted to badly, for so long. I've wanted to be one of you.”

“What… belief?” He glanced behind his shoulder, continuing, “Therefore, God is…”

“Jacob. Please. If I hear everything within twenty minutes…”

“Machines can't die.”

“Please.”

“I'm justified. You're a machine doing an excellent job. You're trying to hypnotize me with your synthetically-enhanced, neuro-linguistic programming bullshit. With your anchoring, your mirroring, your reframing.”

“You're wrong.”

“How?”

“Believe! Why do this?”

“Your brain can be remapped. It can design the vaccine for Claire. Even with your memory erased.”

She leaned over. Her eyes fixed on him and shined. “I'll help. If you can't afford the processor, I'll help. We can find another way. I want to, Jacob.”

“There isn't time. The vaccine algorithms require flexibility. I need an environmentally developed neural network… like yours.”

Karen's freckles darkened. Her skin grew pale.

“If God existed in reality, He might be greater than He is.”

Sweat glimmered around her hairline.

“Therefore, a being greater than God is possible.”

She seemed to struggle for something to tell him. “Jacob, when you were born, your mind began making a map to represent this world. But it can never be as beautiful as the world we share. You can never know what God truly is or where you and I truly fit in relation to God.”

He tried not to focus on what she had said. He tried to chant: “This is not possible, for… for God.” He looked to the ceiling. “For God… ” He winced, “No. I remember. I… I…”

Jacob met her gaze. Shivers ran through his spine as he registered the cold danger of confronting the quick machine.

He dug into his front pants pocket.

She jolted, sending her chair backward. The slit in her black skirt tore as she leapt onto the desk and bolted forward. Her ponytail spread and rose as she fell.

Jacob stood. He spun the chair out behind. His hand scraped and dug against his thigh into the tight pocket. He stepped backward as he pulled out the folded paper.

Her thin hands impacted his chest, expelling air from his lungs. His back slammed into carpet and her knee drove into his stomach as she landed on top of him. He closed his eyes tight as his abdomen burned. Her hands grasped around the base of his skull and chin, and he grabbed her forearms as his neck twisted. She wrenched, increasing pressure in his spine while the base of his skull burned. He held his breath. He resisted.

Her brown eyes rose to the wall.

Jacob wondered if she was looking at her collage of pictures.

She closed her eyes. Her fingers relaxed. “In Venice this beautiful red-haired girl asked if I was a mother.” She trembled as she leaned back, “I wanted to lie. Wanted to lie so… I wasn't meant for children but I always was.” Her face and her exposed shoulders flushed in blotches with her tears spilling and catching in the corners of her lips as she gathered herself to stand. She straightened her skirt and pressed out the wrinkles.

Jacob rolled to his side with his neck stiff and hot. He arched it back, feeling the stings like fiery needles.

She turned from him and stepped toward her desk.

He crawled, trying not to breathe heavily, his hands lifting the folded paper. He turned his head sideways and angled his shoulders to see her black low heels.

“I know Claire's beautiful. Without seeing her I know she's beautiful.” She stopped. “And will be beautiful.”

He lowered himself onto his side and grimaced. His hands unfolded the paper.

He felt ashamed.

He read.

Karen's black heels wobbled and her thin wrists and cheek struck the carpeted floor.

 

The Magic-Fiver

A
t age six
I didn't grasp the significance of Grandpa Fleming being a widower and of his living alone on fixed income in a one-bedroom apartment, however, I still somehow came to sense the importance of his Magic-Fiver.

He always ensured it was in that thick brown leather wallet when he visited for the holidays. Craziness held in the air at these gatherings. Maybe because everyone in my family was some flavor of European mutt. Other families of definite ethnicities have traditions, heritage, pride, that sort of thing, and this must engender these families a certain closeness. We didn't have that. We had uncertainty and secrets. Nervous people, half-familiar with each other, or what they used to be to each other, looking around anxiously, laughing at strange moments. And the smell. When you're young you don't put things together but you still sense. I smelled alcohol on all of them and watched them slow down. Grandpa Fleming smelled of it the strongest. As if he was Irish whiskey's embodiment. All the Irish whiskey of the world had to come from him in some way, or pay royalty.

Grandpa came to our house around four that Christmas day with the party already going strong. He hobbled over the threshold with silver horse-head cane in oversized patent leather shoes, shuffling feet heal-to-toe a good half inch with each stride. His gray twill sport-coat with brown elbow patches had sleeves that almost hid his hands except for overgrown fingernails. His boney liver-spotted hand grasped the silver horse head as if it was his life but his eyes, magnified behind black vintage frames, held the smug confidence of an eighteen-year-old as he made a bee-line to the kitchen. My mother ran her hands over his fleshy walrus jowls and thick white whiskers, asking how he'd been. Without delay, his index finger and head cocked to the upper wooden cabinet, “Sneaky Pete!”

The seated crowd rejoined, haggardly, “Sneaky Pete.” Most people understand a Sneaky Pete to consist of apple brandy and beer. To Grandpa it was beer and Irish whiskey, which was likely something else, but to him it was Sneaky Pete or The Pete.

Making The Pete was an ordeal with the Jamison stashed behind empty mason jars in a big storage cabinet in the den and the beer in the basement, not to mention the last highball being dirty.

Grandpa grumbled, “I'll take my Pete in the family room.”

“That's right,” Great Aunt Bethany said, actually she barked. Whether speaking quiet or loud, everything was more of a bark. She was the sister of Grandpa's departed wife. “Better not stay with Grown-Ups and we discover how far you've gone.”

Grandpa stopped momentarily but kept shuffling, negotiating four stairs down to the family room.

“I'm watching him,” Bethany said to my mother. “He'll spread lies to them kids.”

I followed Grandpa into the family room. Though I was somewhat afraid to go in there because the cousins were in there. It was like they owned the house when we had people over and it seemed they shared some common history I wasn't a part of. They played with our generic Legos near the burgundy sectional couch, building a city and eating white frosting-coated pretzels from a large red and white tray. Cindy, age eight and Jenny, nine, stood and informed me with exuberance that I was mentally retarded because my eyes were too close, then they ran upstairs to the kitchen. Jack and Benson raked over Legos on their knees.

“Whatcha building?” I asked.

“A tower,” Benson remarked, prying apart plastic blocks.

“A tower to where?”

“To inside the TV.”

“Can I help?”

“You have to find all the long, skinny ones. That's your job.”

I sat and segregated a few long, skinny ones for Jack's inspection. They passed and were dutifully added to a generic Lego moat ringing the tower. The moat would discourage the inevitable invasion of the crocodile men. Grandpa watched us from the brown easy-chair in the corner. His eyes flicked momentarily to Bethany walking toward him. She carried his Pete to him with the slightest hint of a grin. She was also a widow, seemingly around fifteen years his junior and she enjoyed displaying how well she could still walk; how she could carry him things.

“Here,” Bethany said, handing him the ice-cube filled drinking glass.

Grandpa took the glass and tasted a draught. “Wait,” he pointed a long fingernail at her.

Bethany stopped and turned.

His face hardened, adjusting and struggling, readying to stand. “Where's the Irish?”

Bethany smiled. “They couldn't find it. It's a lot of trouble.”

“Not true. It's you. Waiting for the day I can't taste. When I can't smell it. Ain't senile—”

“You're too old to drink that way!”

“A Pete without the Irish is no Pete!”

Bethany turned sharply and Grandpa scowled as he watched her walk away.

Our tower was narrow and tall, almost as tall as us, and the three of us munched white salty pretzels.

“What kind of subjects ya got?” Grandpa asked and drank his iced beer.

I looked up, “What?”

Grandpa looked at me, insulted. He set down his glass and shook outstretched palms, “If you build a tower that tall, you got to have subjects. That's a lot of bricks. Not every man's meant to carry bricks.”

This was the first time I really remember Grandpa talking to me and I was intrigued.

I pondered. Then smiled, flexing thin arms, “They'll be strong.”

Grandpa harrumphed and settled back into his easy-chair, disgusted. “Big mistake.” He finished his beer and chewed his ice, looking at the glass with furrowed brow, mumbling, “Just one good drink.” He settled further back into his chair and dozed-off.

When we ran out of Legos our attention focused on Grandpa. He muttered things occasionally, eyes rolling beneath lids, but we couldn't understand him. Maybe another language, maybe old-fashioned words. We threw our white pretzels onto him, watching them bounce on his stomach and settle in folds of his coat. He stirred and the pelting pretzels accelerated his dreaming.

He cried softly, “Helena!” and we giggled and hushed each other. Helena was his wife, she died in an apartment fire, I think.

Benson taunted, “You won't hit him in the face!”

“Oh yes I will,” I said. “Watch. Just watch. Watch.” I ate the frosting off a pretzel, licking the bare brown coating to moisten it. I sighted Grandpa's head with one eye and with pretzel drawn and waiting behind my ear. Then flung it and it sailed in an arch, ending in a patting sound as the small brown pretzel held fast to Grandpa's white wrinkled forehead. His head flinched but he simmered. Jack and Benson leaned forward, mouths gaping. Grandpa's eyes opened.

“RUN!” Jack and Benson cried, pulling at my elbows but I stayed seated on the carpet and let them flee.

Grandpa got his bearings, looking into the corners of the room like he'd never been there before. Then his eyes moved up a little to his forehead. He peeled the pretzel off and gave a grin of discovery before popping it in his mouth. He chewed. “Where's the frosting?”

“I ate it.”

“Hmmph, stingy.” He leaned forward, digging into this back pocket to get out the thick brown wallet and slap it on the simulated-wood TV-tray which his empty drink also rested atop. “Have you heard about my Magic-Fiver?”

I shook my head side-to-side.

Grandpa scooted to his left in the easy-chair. “Come on up here then, my boy. Let's handle this business of ours.”

I wedged myself into the available space of the easy-chair, which was weird because his legs were very warm and soft, even for an old man.

Grandpa tapped the wallet. “I always keep the Magic-Fiver right in here. Before I show it to you, you gotta know some things.”

I looked up at hairy folds in his neck. “What?”

“I'm not from where people say I'm from. I mean, wasn't born where people say I was. Do you know where I was born?”

“Where?”

Grandpa smirked big. “Outer space!”

“Like Mork and Mindy?”

He shook his head and looked away, wistfully, “Robin Williams.” He adjusted in the easy-chair. “Not like Mork and Mindy, but, sort of. The real me is very small. Smaller than a spec of dust. I sucked my mind out of my first body and put it inside a tiny, tiny bug. Then I flew a long way in a tiny ship to Earth. That was before I met your Grandmother and the fella I stole this body you see here from, he wasn't doing much with it, so; no bother.”

I knew people were always lying to young kids, thinking they were being clever and that it was funny. But I liked this one, so I played along, “Are you really an alien?”

“Things aren't always as they seem. Like Bethany. She was a Nazi sympathizer in the second Great War.”

“What's… sympathizer?”

“Not sure,” he shrugged, “Ask her.”

“Why'd you have to leave?”

“Subjects were strong, too strong. Got tired of building the tower. We were supposed to have a republic, eventually, but I told them we'd work out minor stuff as we went. I ended up taking care of most details of their lives for some fees.” He rubbed over his forehead, “They didn't thank me. And I had to leave, quickly.”

I cringed at Grandpa, “You were bad?”

“Dictator's the best ruler. A benevolent dictator cares for his people. It's the extra fuss of government that holds the people down. Talks all about it in that Greek Republic. And about a man needing a woman and his having fair rights on her.” (There is no such sentiment as this last part in Plato's Republic. I checked.)

“What's in your wallet?”

“The Magic-Fiver.” His hand rested on the wallet. “Let's see—”

Bethany barked from the kitchen steps, “STOP LYING TO THEM KIDS!”

“BITE THAT TONGUE IN TWOS!” Grandpa straightened his jacket then eyed his empty glass before flipping open the thick wallet. “I can show you part of it.”

“Is it money?”

“Yes. It's a souvenir. I had it sent to me in a much, much bigger ship. The size of a baseball. Took a long time to get here. Ships of normal scales don't travel so good. Worth about the same as one of Uncle Sam's five dollar bills.” He pulled the bill out. It rustled like sandpaper and was black like charcoal with thin purple lines. “And it's got my picture in the center just like Andrew Jackson.” He flattened it on the TV-tray, being careful to cover a spot with his three fingers that was just to the left of center. I looked at the supposed portrait and felt embarrassment, maybe real shame for the first time. Inspecting the sloppy, thin purple lines it seemed a child had drawn a cross between several mop heads and a starfish.

“That's not real. You're not real.”

“Yes I am. It is too.”

“You don't look like one.”

“That's because only my brain had to change. And don't worry, only a little bit of that alien brain got passed along to you. Besides, best people ever lived got a little alien in their brains.”

“Show me under your fingers.”

“Can't. It'll hurt your eyes and your brain. Under these fingers is what stops the counterfeiters.”

“They wouldn't use paper. They'd use computers for money.”

“What's that? You mean, like telephone money. That don't work. You put the money in the telephone lines and people find a way to take it out. And this. This reminds people everyday. It reminds them who's taking care of them. But you had to have the right equipment to make them. It's hard to make, only one machine anywhere could make it.”

I tried to lift up his fingers, “Let me see.”

“I can't. Your brain's not hooked-up to see it right. You ever draw a cube made of lines and pretend it was a real block coming out of the page.”

“Yes.”

“That's your brain being tricked by the paper into thinking something that's flat is not-flat. Now, if you got something that can print lines real thin, print 'em just right, it can trick a brain, like the brain I got, into thinking it's got some shape to it, plus an extra dimension… uh, some extra types of shapes you can't see. And it can make you think it's moving.”

“No it can't, Grandpa.”

“Why not! Space and time is part of the same thing. If your brain plays tricks on you when you're looking at space, why can't your brain look at some space and get tricked in time?”

“You're funny. Let me see it.”

Grandpa looked up. Bethany walked fast and angry. “Playing them carnival comic book games.” She cringed and her finger jabbed at him. “Give it here. Gimmie that stupid funny-money dollar.”

She loomed over the TV-tray, her face all crimson and Grandpa pulled it toward himself in jest. “But, it's mine. It's all I have to remember my time in…” He smiled, “Outer space.”

“Give it over.” She jabbed her finger. “Stop feed'n 'em lies.”

“All right,” Grandpa's clenched hands folded both ends of the bill together, “Here goes.” He raised his hands and unfolded the bill to her.

I swung round to look at the bill and Bethany screamed. The edge of something pulled my sight in. I heard thunder, my vision ringed with a bright swirling flash.

“MY EYES!” Bethany staggered, toppling the Lego tower onto itself like a crumpled drinking straw. “I'm blind. I'm—I can't.” She tottered onto her butt, hands reaching out at nothing.

The next I remember, I was crying near Grandpa's easy chair with my back pressed into the ridge between the laundry closet and the molding. Aunt Becky and my father helped Bethany up, restraining her flailing.

“I'll kill you! I can't. Ruined her. Ruined. I—”

Grandpa laughed heartily, bouncing, eyes feasting. “Won't let me taste that Irish.” He snatched up his empty glass with the air of a toast, and swirled the ice cubes, then lifted his legs to click his floppy, loose heels together, “Taste that Fiver!” floppy shoes clicking, “Taste it!”