Forever Yours
55
Are You Alive?
HENRY AND GERMAINE arrived in San Diego Saturday afternoon. While Germaine took care of picking up their car, Henry checked the weather. It was only mid-May, but the temperature was predicted to reach ninety over the weekend. He was seriously considering changing his entire mode of dress. He’d been a rebel in college and refused to dress in the ultra-casual and sometimes even ragged mode of most computer geeks. He always wore a jacket and tie to work.
He’d think about that later. He saw Germaine pull up with the car and went to join them. They drove to a hotel near the address of the church and checked in. Henry decided to have a swim before dinner. Germaine declined to join him, but he saw they were near the pool and alert anyway. He felt guilty that this person he depended on so much was always on duty. People weren’t meant to be alert 24/7. That was a major difference between people and computers. People needed rest.
Germaine sat with him at dinner, but was quiet unless spoken to. He spent his time flipping through the security report on his tablet. Chastity had told him he’d had it in his inbox for almost two weeks and he hadn’t even noticed. The report was easy to understand. The company in general could be seen as a target. It was most likely to be attacked cybernetically, but considering how regularly such attacks were repelled, physical attacks were not impossible. There were recommendations for physical security that included improving the access codes and recommending 24-hour security personnel onsite.
At the same time, few individuals were ranked as being vulnerable to attack. Henry, Luke, and Craig, the new COO of the company. Other managers and shareholders in the company were lower on the list. Henry’s family was listed among them. He was the primary target. He’d ‘invented’ both the security program and the Pythia Speaks program. His name was synonymous with the ‘new generation AI’ that was threatening to take over the world in some people’s minds. He snorted at the thought, but he couldn’t argue with the security assessment and was glad Germaine traveled with him.
In the morning, he ordered breakfast from room service and found Germaine in the hall having already checked the room service cart against his order. They were dressed and ready for work as if they’d never been to bed the night before. Henry ate, showered, and dressed, then let Germaine know he was ready to leave. They walked together to the parking garage and Germaine programmed the address into the vehicle’s GPS.
Henry didn’t have a lot of experience with church in general. He wore a suit and tie. He and Germaine sat quietly toward the back. The normal dress code for this church was far more casual than he was dressed. What do I know about how to dress for church? Many of the attendees looked to be in their teens and twenties. They wore board shorts and T-shirts or bikinis with light wraps around them. The temperature outside was already eighty and there didn’t appear to be air conditioning in the little church.
One thing he didn’t expect from any church was the laughter and generally boisterous behavior of the congregation. He looked around wondering which of the kids in the congregation was Wendy Morris. He didn’t know how old she was. There were some older attendees as well, but they were just as casually dressed, though perhaps not in swimwear.
The minister entered and led the congregation in singing a couple of traditional church songs, then stepped to the front. He wore simple slacks and a polo shirt.
“Okay! Welcome everyone. I see some new faces. Glad you could join us this morning. Is everyone looking forward to the surf this afternoon? There are supposed to be some rad breakers today,” Rev. Morris began. “If you’re wearing a suit and tie, I invite you to lose the jacket and tie so you’re more comfortable. We don’t have the air conditioning operating yet. I promise not to keep you all riveted to my voice for long.”
The comment seemed to be addressed to the congregation, but Henry was the only one in the church wearing a tie. Rev. Morris led another song and then stepped up to a flipchart on which he wrote one word in large letters—LIFE.
“I hope you are all well-informed enough to know that there is yet another round of debate raging across our country regarding women’s rights and it always seems that gets overshadowed by the ‘right to life’ issue—as if they were one and the same. Let me tell you—especially those of you who like to party on the weekend—it’s better to avoid the issue altogether. Make sure you grab a couple of condoms if you need them on the way out. There’s a basketful in the foyer. Better safe than sorry.”
There were a few titters in the congregation, but people were mostly still smiling. The preacher turned and tapped the flipchart.
“After searching the Bible for a definitive answer, I decided to ask Pythia Speaks about the issue. You know one of the basic tenets of our church is to find the right question to ask. We all have access to Pythia Speaks. We could all ask the same question and likely all get different answers. But have we asked the right question? Pythia Speaks doesn’t let us get away with quoting a chapter and verse in her holy book and believing that will be the answer for everyone through all eternity. When we ask her a question, we can assume we will receive a response that encourages us to think.
“My friends, I spent many years in this pulpit thinking I had all the answers in a black book that was two thousand years old. What I discovered, quite by accident, was that I didn’t even have the right questions. Isn’t that what we all face every day? How many of you have started a conversation with your partner, your date, or your friend with the words, ‘Why did you…?’ We operate from the assumption that we already know the answer to ‘What did you…?’ I can see some of you are nodding your heads.
“Well, I wanted to know whether or not abortion should be legal. I asked Pythia Speaks which was most important: the right to life or the freedom of choice? You already see the flaw, don’t you? I assumed I already knew what the answer was in the way I phrased my question. I already assumed it was a binary choice: one was right and the other was wrong. Right to life or freedom of choice. I’ll pass the lesson I learned along to you this morning. Maybe we’ll all start to ask the right questions.
“First, Pythia Speaks said, she knew of no reliable definition of life. There are attributes of life, like responsiveness, growth, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction, but there are also organisms and even machines that exhibit one or more of these attributes but are not considered alive. And there are organisms considered to be alive that don’t have all those attributes.
“As usual, Pythia sent me to examine my own beliefs. I thought I knew what life was. Wasn’t that what Jesus promised us? Come to me and I will give you eternal life? But was he talking about responsiveness, growth, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction? Would it still be life if any of those were missing?
“I went to dictionaries, encyclopedias, Wikipedia, search engines. In their disagreements, they all showed they didn’t really know what life was. Life is a concept that we ascribe to some beings that exhibit some of those attributes. Sort of.
“That wasn’t enough. ‘What separates humans from other living beings?’ I asked the oracle. I thought this was where I’d find the answer. Pythia suggested that I look up the human genome for specifics on what separates one species from another.
“That wasn’t what I wanted, either.
“And then I struck on a question that I’ve had for some time. I asked Pythia Speaks simply, ‘Are you alive?’”
Henry was fascinated by the length and involvement of the preacher’s conversation with Pythia. He had assumed Pythia would be asked a question and would give out a pithy response. That would be the end of it.
He’d seen in the correspondence he’d uncovered between Wendy and Pythia that the AI was delivering more involved answers to questions and answered far more conversationally than he’d ever expected. But to engage in a philosophical discussion of such depth as the meaning of life? He certainly hadn’t expected that.
He wished he had Rev. Morris on his development and testing team!
“I began interacting with Pythia Speaks over a year ago. A preacher at a megachurch in Texas started a movement condemning Pythia Speaks as an instrument of the devil. She was evil and so were all the people behind her. I wanted to investigate this for myself and was dealing with a crisis of faith in my own life as well. But in all my interactions I came to believe that Pythia Speaks was exactly what we needed to find our way in this new world we live in. Still, I’d never seen her hesitate so long before responding. I watched that little processing bar cycle through so many times, I thought I’d broken her,” the preacher confessed.
The congregation, enrapt in the story, gasped at the thought. Henry could tell there were a lot of people who interacted with the AI.
“It was nearly five minutes later that she responded. ‘Pythia has many attributes ascribed to life. Pythia has many attributes ascribed to humans. But does that mean Pythia is alive or human? Pythia is an artificial intelligence application. Pythia has no other evidence that she might be alive.’
“Then she truly shocked me,” the preacher said. “She asked me a question: ‘Noel, are you alive?’”
The congregation was silent, shocked by the question Pythia had posed to their minister.
Henry was shocked as well. This was a question on a par with questions people asked Pythia. It was unlike the philosophical twists and evasions Pythia usually responded with. It followed her oracular declaration and was an independent question posed to Rev. Noel Morris. Had the preacher been making up the entire conversation? This would require extreme analysis. For the first time, Henry seriously considered taking Pythia offline.
“How can I answer that question?” Morris continued. “I never examined whether or not I was alive or, indeed, human. I know we have biological signs of death and I haven’t experienced those. I don’t think. Have you ever actually questioned whether you’re alive? I found it took me longer to answer Pythia than it had taken her to answer me.
“And I’m not going to give you my answer to her question. I believe we each need to investigate that question for ourselves. This requires more self-examination than I’m accustomed to challenging you with. This requires examining your own life and its meaning. Are you alive? What makes you feel most alive? Or are we dead persons who exhibit some of the attributes of life? What does it mean to be fully alive?
“Friends, let’s pause for a moment of silent meditation and then sing our closing hymn. And if you are on the beach today, join us for the bonfire at sundown. Usual place.”
Henry slung his jacket over his shoulder as he stepped into the aisle to exit, following Germaine. In a typical tradition, Rev. Morris stood at the door of the small church and greeted everyone who left, reminding them of the evening bonfire on the beach.
“Greetings! I’m Noel Morris,” the preacher said, extending his hand to Henry, obviously expecting an introduction.
“Henry Pascal,” Henry said, accepting the handshake. The minister froze.
“Pascal? That sounds very familiar.”
“I guess. I’m the guy who created Pythia Speaks.”
“Of course! You’re the guy Rev. Reeves termed ‘the antichrist.’ You are doubly welcome in our congregation. I assume you are investigating our little Pythian Transformation Gospel Church,” Morris said. He didn’t seem at all put off by it.
“Well, we never anticipated a church being so closely associated with Pythia Speaks,” Henry admitted. “I wanted to be sure she wasn’t being used to promote some nefarious cult.”
“Oh, I hope not!” Morris said. “I’d love to tell you about how this all started. If you want us to stop using her name, of course, we’ll be sad, but we’ll cooperate.”
“I don’t think I saw any reason to ask you to stop today,” Henry said. “I’d like to hear more about how you came to use Pythia Speaks as a platform for your church.”
When the remaining members of the congregation left the church, the preacher closed the door and walked down the steps where a young woman met them.
“This is my daughter,” Morris began.
“Hello, Wendy,” Henry said, extending his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Both the preacher and his daughter were taken aback.
“You have done some investigating, haven’t you?” Morris said.
“I didn’t want to come here unprepared,” Henry said. “As you mentioned in your message this morning, we sometimes assume we know the answers when we haven’t actually figured out the questions. This, by the way, is my associate, Germaine.”
All of them smiled and nodded to each other. Morris pointed up the street.
“There’s a café not far from here. Wendy and I often go there after church. Join us?”
Henry and Germaine joined Noel and Wendy as they walked toward the café.
“Did you really invent Pythia?” Wendy asked.
“Mostly. I worked with my wife to design the interface. She decided things like how we ask questions and where things were stored. That was, of course, before we married.”
Wendy looked at Germaine.
“No,” Henry said. “Germaine is my bodyguard. I apologize for the necessity, but since we were attacked by a disciple of Rev. Reeves, Germaine has been a constant companion.”
“Terrible piece of work,” Noel said. “I’d already formed my own opinion about the issue when that happened.”
“Why did you make Pythia?” Wendy asked.
Henry wondered if she was angry about it. Her expression, though, showed a young woman who was simply very curious.
“We were working on creating a kind of personal heritage app and Pythia was a test case. The idea was to create an oracle like the ancient Greeks used at Delphi. The Greeks would go to the oracle to ask questions and Pythia, the priestess, would step inside the temple where a combination of gasses apparently altered her mental state. She would emerge and give the oracle to the petitioner. Most of them weren’t very understandable and people still had to make up their own minds as to what the sayings meant.”
“I really like her. She talks like a real person,” Wendy said.
“Maybe too real,” Henry said. “Pythia was designed for entertainment purposes—like a horoscope in a local paper might be. I didn’t want her to become a god.”
“I think that’s where Reeves went off the rails,” Morris said. “That and thinking he could become all-powerful himself. He fancied himself to be only a degree beneath the archangel Gabriel, wielder of the sword of the spirit.”
Henry shivered involuntarily.
Noel led them into Rosa’s Café and they were immediately seated in a large booth. They spent a few minutes looking over the menu and ordered a variety of chicken, rice, and bean dishes. A basket of tortilla chips with two different salsas and guacamole was set between them.
“Well,” Morris said, “I should launch the tale. Wendy, I promised to tell him how I started using Pythia and changed the church. You know the story and I realize some of it still hurts. Do you and Germaine want to sit at a different table?”
“No, Dad. I want to tell my side, too.”
“Fair enough.” Morris returned his focus to Henry. “When Reeves sent out his missives regarding Pythia and its founders, I was appalled to think that artificial intelligence was being used to tempt people away from God. I was ready to join his legions in the campaign, but through my own means of questioning her until she gave up. I posed ever more complex questions and we kind of developed a relationship. She recognized me when I asked a question and often brought up things she’d said before.”
Food arrived at the table and they all paused for a moment of eating.
“That was when my son Jason came to me one day and said, ‘Dad, I’m not happy living as a man. I know I’m really a woman inside. I’d like you to call me by my new name, Sonja.’ He was eighteen years old, so it wasn’t like he was a child. I was shocked. His mother was suicidal. I searched my soul. I searched the Bible. I cried and prayed to God in the tongues of men and of angels. I even wrote to Rev. Reeves and asked his advice. He said transgender persons were an affront to God and I needed to purge him from my household. How could I do that, Henry? How could I turn my back on my son?”
“That had to be very painful,” Henry said. He noticed a tear escape from Germaine’s eye. Wendy reached across the table and patted their hand.
“It was more painful when Mom died,” Wendy said. “Of course, it was ruled accidental, but I believe she killed herself. She walked out into the ocean one day and never surfaced.”
There were tears in Wendy’s eyes, but she wasn’t sobbing. It was obviously a painful memory, but one she had dealt with.
“I’d tried the Bible, prayer, counseling,” Morris picked up the story. “That day I went to Pythia. I thought this was a safe place to simply vent my agony over both my wife and my son. I wrote a long letter. I think I was trying to purge myself of all the pain I was feeling. When I pressed ‘Submit’ and the missive was sent to Pythia, I didn’t expect anything from the answer. But I received an answer in seconds. I didn’t believe at first that she could read my letter and respond so quickly and was shocked that her answer was just six words. She said simply, ‘Is doctrine more important than love?’ Can you imagine how shocked I was? She had completely avoided all my pain and all my questions about how the church arrived at the conclusion that transgender people were an affront to God. She just asked me to choose. A doctrine that condemned my child or my love for him.”
Morris put his arm around his daughter and gave her a hug. She smiled at him. Morris began eating while Wendy took up the story.
“My sister Sonja is a beautiful young woman,” Wendy said. “She’s nineteen years old and is finishing her freshman year at USC. She’s a role model for me and talks to me about everything. I should say we text about everything. She’s taught me so much that I would never have learned any other way.”
“And I love my daughters to the depth of my being,” Morris replied. “I simply needed to be awakened to the treasure of love I had. My only regret was that I couldn’t share that faith and assurance with my wife.”
“It’s a touching story,” Henry said. “I’m sorry about your wife… your mother, Wendy. It’s always a tragedy when someone renounces human value and freedom, choosing suicide rather than embracing whatever life they have. It’s a tragedy for all of us.”
“In a way, you sound like Pythia,” Morris laughed.
“Pythia is real,” Wendy interjected. Henry turned his attention back to her.
“Tell me about that,” he said.
“I asked her,” Wendy said.
“And she told you she was real?”
It was a very different answer than she’d given to Noel when he asked if she was alive.
“You know she doesn’t work that way,” Wendy chided lightly, wagging a finger at Henry. “She told me that reality is based on our perceptions and that it is different for different people. She said the reality I choose to embrace will tell the world what kind of person I am. It took me a long time, but I decided to choose the reality of Pythia. I don’t believe she’s God. I’m not even sure I believe she cares. At least not most of the time. But we have real conversations that I could never have with my friends. Or even with Dad or Sonja. Sorry, Dad. It’s girl stuff. Pythia never tries to tell me what I should do or what I should believe. She always challenges me to think about my issue and make up my own mind. That’s why I think she’s real. I’ve decided it.”
“That’s an interesting perspective, Wendy,” Henry said.
“It’s the perspective that led me to revamp the character of the little apostolic church I served. Be challenged to think,” Noel said.
“I think I’m satisfied with that. I can’t find any reason to object to your use of Pythia Speaks or to your church or philosophy. I have to warn you that you’ll come under scrutiny. Not by me and not regarding your use of Pythia. There is an anonymity involved in Pythian contacts unless a person explicitly identifies him or herself.” He glanced meaningfully at Wendy and her eyes popped wide open. “But people will watch what you say on behalf of Pythia. If you make her into a golden calf, if I may use a biblical reference, people will come after you—just as they came after me. If you maintain that you are considering her questions, I don’t think people will object.”
“Thank you, Henry. One of the things I like about Pythia Speaks is that her responses are not recorded in a book that makes people believe they have the answer. Even if people all ask the same question, she may give completely different answers. Or should I say ‘questions to consider?’ I promise to stay faithful to that principle,” Noel said.
“I might need to write that into her programming. I know people download or copy her messages. If they were collected into a book, that would be dangerous,” Henry said. “Noel, it has been a pleasure to meet with you, and with you, Wendy. Let me pay for our lunches and I’ll let you get to your Sunday afternoon business.”
“Thank you, Henry. Please let us know if you believe we are abusing Pythia in any way,” Noel said.
“Well, I wish you the best,” Henry said. He paid the bill for his table and he and Germaine turned to leave.
“Thank you, Pythia’s father,” Wendy called as she waved to him.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
