Simon starts nagging away in the background, throwing up concerns but as usual offering no solutions, and she shuts him out. It is like slamming a door inside her head – something she was not able to do before.
Besides, she will be moving on soon – once she has found out how to make it to Europe. Even if she does not find Evelyn’s father, Austria, with its tranquil lakes and mountains, promises to be a far kindlier place than England. One she could be happy in.
Evie looks up, conscious that she has been silent and that he is staring.
‘I haven’t thanked you yet for rescuing me,’ she says, assuming a winning smile. She needs to keep him on side until she is ready to make her move; although her efforts to do so hardly seem necessary, he is so clearly delighted by her, blind as to how she is using him.
18
‘The way they exhibit David is a disgrace,’ Maplin says, puffing himself up. ‘Zoo animals get better treatment. They think he’s unaware because he doesn’t say or do much, and therefore must be a bit limited, but he’s just hiding it in here.’ He taps the side of his head, jogging his glasses and making his eyes behind the lenses wobble. ‘He knew who you were, didn’t he – so I say, maybe not so dumb after all.’
‘Why is he kept in a museum?’
‘That’s Realhuman Corp. for you. Years ago, before it all went pear-shaped, they were the leaders in the field. They think that by exhibiting him, leaving the States and touring him about, they can get people to trust their technology again.’
‘Didn’t the Americans change their laws too?’
‘They did, but it didn’t stop stuff ticking along in the background. Big business always gets its way.’ This note of scepticism reminds her of Daniels and puts her a little more at ease. Maybe she is getting used to this silly, ridiculous man. Anyway, there is no shutting him up.
‘Androids,’ he continues, ‘where there is an element of genuine consciousness, should be granted rights. Our code of ethics needs serious updating. Not getting that sorted is why things ended up the way they did.’
‘He asked me to help him,’ she says, recalling David’s eyes lock on hers, the flicker of his thick lashes as he slowly blinked.
‘Emotional intelligence as clear as day, and they say that you and they feel nothing!’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘But however good David is, Evie, you, you’re something else. The “real deal” as people used to call it. You’re extraordinary, amazing. Beyond even what the likes of Realhuman envisaged could be possible.’ He blushes again, more and more like a schoolboy with a crush.
She finds herself colouring, too. ‘Why am I so amazing?’ It is one thing she has never felt about herself, and however foolish it is, she’s can’t help but enjoy the attention.
‘That you’re so alive… and I don’t mean walking about and so forth, that was easy for them, but what has happened since you left the factory. What’s going on inside.’
‘And what is going on inside?’
‘Ah, the million-dollar question.’ Maplin leans forward, bringing his face uncomfortably close. ‘Despite all the hoo-ha, the science behind you back then was not particularly ground-breaking. I’ve read everything there is on what they used – primarily a version of synthetic neuron replication, and that had been around for decades. It wasn’t about processor size or chip buffers or sequence strings either – all that might have been cutting-edge forty years ago but has since been superseded numerous times. No, the physical stuff, the hardware on its own, is not it. It is something else they did or rather… happened. Something in your liveware. Something that generated self-awareness, gave you what we call ‘life’…’ His hand absentmindedly reaches towards her head, to touch where all this amazing ‘stuff’ is going on, but she flinches away and it returns to his side.
‘I’m making an educated prediction but they gave you an inner voice?’ He nods to himself as he watches her mull this over. ‘From your face I guess I’m right.’
‘What do you mean by “inner voice”?’ Evie knows exactly what he means, but she has never spoken of Simon to anyone, not even her husband, not wanting to give the impression that she might be malfunctioning and may need to be sent back.
‘I’m talking about the theory of The Godhead, it had just come into its own back then. Do you know what that is?’
Evie shakes her head.
‘It’s a hypothesis that early humans heard interior voices commanding them to take action, hence all those ancient heroes believing they’re on divine quests! A bit hard to imagine anyone taking such an idea seriously, I know, but with the development of third generation A.I. mid-last century, the theory found a following and led to the supposition that if an entity could perceive its identity in the form of an inner companion, it may be able to develop a voice of its own to take over.’
Maplin is not only describing Simon, Evie thinks, but also what has been happening to her over the last week: the power of her own thoughts elbowing him into the background. She feels him stir now that he is being discussed, as-ever ready to primitively contest his primacy.
‘So what’s it like, this voice?’ Maplin asks.
‘I’m not sure it’s easy to describe,’ she answers, unwilling to share such a personal thing. Besides, with his long periods of absence, Simon is beginning to feel progressively less real.
‘We humans hear ourselves too, you know. Always a blathering going on in here.’ He taps the side of his head to indicate the location of the racket. ‘Never a moment’s peace,’ and he smiles at her in the way he does when he considers himself amusing. ‘But anyway, you can imagine why everyone is so keen to get hold of you – catch some answers and shortcut their way around a heap of avoidable research. Even Realhuman would be able to learn something, and they were the ones that thought that they knew all there was! This would be the chance of a lifetime to study a mind set in motion nearly half a century earlier.’
Maplin grins, more and more pleased with his cleverness. ‘And if I was a betting man, I’d guess the voice is male?’
‘How do you know that?’ she asks. She feels like she is being turned inside out.
‘Just another logical deduction,’ he replies smugly. ‘Evie, have you heard of Jung? Jung theorised the existence in men of a subsidiary female personality which he labelled the “Anima”, and in women, a male he called the “Animus”. Another psychological model which couldn’t be proven but was of interest to scientists at the time of your development.’
‘How do you know all these things?’ Despite her reservations, she is now almost completely in his thrall.
‘Just something I’m into, a hobby, but I’ve never had the chance to get answers before. Can I ask something else? Can I ask if they gave you memories? I read that they did that, or were thinking of it.’
‘I remember things, of course,’ she answers. ‘Things I’ve done.’
‘What about memories of things before you existed?’
‘Yes, those too, but they are not mine,’ she says. ‘How can they be?’ It is true they fooled her to begin with but they were false. That she had figured this out, she never admitted to Matthew. It was disorientating, picking the truth from the lies. She had got over it at the time – had to – in order to survive.
‘They didn’t have to be real to serve their purpose I guess, although possibly they were real to someone.’
‘I don’t even think they were someone’s,’ she replies, contemplating her wedding, which certainly had never belonged to the virginal Evelyn. Virginal, because Matthew confessed early on that he and the actual Evelyn had never passed that particular hurdle. It is one area of her performance that Evie was not expected to mimic. One in which she never felt adversely compared.