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B.M.: Thank you for arriving on such short notice. E.C.: O- Of course. E.C.: So... It works? B.M.: It works well enough. Sure, we can’t leave the thing on for longer than ten minutes but, uh… we haven’t found a task it couldn’t complete in five. The issue isn’t getting it to work, your son already did that, it’s figuring out how he did it. E.C.: I- I don’t know how much help I’d be. I… I’m a biologist. B.M.: I don’t need your help. At least… not in the traditional sense. But you are useful! I mean, if you weren’t, I doubt you’d still be alive right now. E.C.: ... B.M.: No hard feelings. Can I give you a demonstration of its computing capabilities? --- B.M.: What do you see? E.C.: A tarot reading. A clairvoyance practice performed by charlatans and psychics. Started in the fifteenth century. My son always had an interest in sorcery. B.M.: Precisely. Now... Do you want to know what's fucking weird about that? Yeah, it is... aware of certain similarities between its method and that of humans, but it expressly didn't take inspiration from them. Because it was given no information to believe that they work. What we’re seeing here is simply a remarkable coincidence. E.C.: So? I mean… it’s a fascinating coincidence, but… What’s the point? Why bring me all the way out here? B.M.: ....Enzo- Can I call you Enzo? Do you wanna know why I never moved my office down here? I mean, I’ve spent nineteen years of my life attached to this thing. Seven funding it, twelve… babysitting it. It’s probably the most important work I’ll ever do. I just don’t like the thing... It gives me the creeps. It... knows things. Yeah. Stupid, right? What else is it supposed to do? But… Enzo, when you give it a question it has to work really hard for… The answers you get tend to be a bit abstract. The information is always something you can act on, we programmed it to operate as such, it’s just. It phrases things weird. Like it knows it’s being watched. Let me let you in on a little secret Dr. Capulo… And I know you’re going to keep it. Because if you don’t, and if you tell a soul, the scientists who label your work a joke will laugh you out of academia even more than they already have. Enzo… Down in that server room, caught in a tangle of wires, is a titanium box containing a copy of your thesis on Calphecite’s reaction to human tissue, the earrings which Helena Borkoshavski wore on the night that she died, and- [THIS INFORMATION HAS BEEN REMOVED BY THE CHURCH OF APOPHIS CLETANISM].” |