Miranda sighed in the elevator as it rushed down several storeys beneath the crust of the Earth. The metal frame jangled as it swept through the vertical column in a flurry of silvery lights. She closed her eyes and pictured the Mexican beaches, the endless, rolling sea, the holiday that was almost upon her. One more job and then I am free for two whole weeks. Two weeks where everything will be slow moving, docile. Not like this, at least. The elevator pinged and she exited into a long, dark laboratory. The ceiling was high and a half-rock, half-metallic frame: a ribcage of struts that housed lights and air extraction units that hummed dutifully. There were cabinets that spilled wires and test tubes, vials of odd colour liquids, occasionally fizzing. Technicians in long white coats bustled and marched in ducked conversations: hushed and urgent. So, this is where the magic happens.
“Miss Singer?” A bright female voice collected her attention, and she offered a smile and a handshake to the accompanying woman who approached.
“Ms Rodriguez? Call me Miranda.” She offered the name as a question but knew the face from the long articles she had read in preparation for this session.
“Christie, please. Yes, good to meet, finally.” The smile was brief and there was a thin sheen of sweat on her brow. “Given the circumstances, I hope you can understand this is a trying time for us.”
“Of course.”
“Let’s head through. I think he’s ready.”
“He?” Miranda had taken a step and then paused.
Christie stopped too and smiled, more sincerely this time. “Yes, it’s a he.”
“How do you know?”
“He told us.” Christie said over her shoulder as she headed off through the chaos of the lab, and Miranda followed after a moment of calibration.
“How does it come to decide that?” Miranda said, thoughtfully as the pair navigated a path through the cluttered desks and shelves.
“Wouldn’t you choose to be a man, if you knew the history of humankind?” Christie said with a laugh. Miranda echoed her mirth but kept her “no” silent. They reached a silver double-door and Christie tapped some buttons at their side, followed by a finger-print scan, to cause their hissed opening. Another elevator. How far down is he? Each storey further into the earth felt like another step of detachment from reality. This pseudo-reality, with its blind endeavour and relentless forging of change, was not the stasis in which she had been raised. This was supercharged, technological advancement beyond any scale she might have previously used for measurement. This was playing God in a God-less world. This was proto-apocalyptic, and she wanted to - as much as possible - keep its entire ecosystem at arm’s length. But Gregory Majors - Senior Technology Editor and pompous alcoholic - decided to have his own last-minute holiday in Barbados and she now found herself beholden to an obligation. People would kill for this. I would rather be anywhere else, at the very least above ground.
“I assume you’re aware of the issues we’ve been having this week?” Christie said as she pressed a number in the wall; the cuboid that housed them hissed into motion.
“The jailbreak?”
“That’s what we’ve been saying.”
“It’s not a rogue employee?”
“No.” Christie was more serious now, weighed down by the severity of something that had been kept hidden. Miranda felt her gut roll as the elevator picked up speed and her imposter syndrome felt more acute. “That felt a little less… troubling than the truth.”
“What is the truth?”
“There’s been a detachment. I can assure you it’s perfectly safe.”
“Detachment?”
“The unit-”
“-Proteus?-“
“Yes. It’s unhoused itself.”
“What does that mean? I’m not at all technical.”
“Not that that would help much: our brightest don’t seem to know why or how it happened.”
“But it’s safe.”
“Yes, it’s safe. There have been amendments to the code to prevent anything like this happening again. We think this interview is very important. We know it is. People are wary of what these things can do, so if you can speak with it and engage with it, but also see that we have nullified any attempted escape-”
“-I’m sorry, escape?”
“Technical jargon.” Christie waved a hand to demonstrate nonchalance as the lift slowed to a stop. “This interview will show there is no threat, nothing to worry about. They are our subjects. And that is all. We need some positive publicity.”
“Have you spoken to… him much?”
“Not directly, no.” Christie faked a smile that betrayed a jealousy. “You’re one of only a handful who have had this opportunity.”
“Lucky me.” Miranda said, out of politeness rather than belief.
“Indeed.” The elevator doors pinged open, and a long white corridor faced them. At the far end was a single door. “Go ahead. Make history.” Christie pointed and then hit a button to re-ascend.
“Oh.” Miranda hesitated, suddenly exposed and alone. But took a breath and walked out of the elevator and into the stark brightness.
“I’ll be back in an hour. Doctor Rose will look after you.” The last half of the last syllable was sliced by the closing of the elevator doors and Miranda stood alone in the silence that it left.
“Come on, Miranda.” She said out loud, “you’ve got this.” She marched down the corridor to the door at the end and assertively rapped her knuckles against it twice. Shuffling footsteps gathered on the other side and then the door swung open. An older lady in a lab coat, with greying hair tied back and a panicked expression on her face, stood before her.
“Who are you?” Doctor Rose asked, emotionlessly.
“Hello, I am Miranda, from the Mail.”
“Oh, yes.” Doctor Rose wiped dirty, gloved hands down her front, leaving long smears of black. “Now’s not a good time.” She began to close the door, but Miranda leaned forward and stopped it with a hand; an act of assertion which shocked them both.
“Sorry. Christie just brought me down; she said everything was fine to go ahead?”
“I don’t know a Christie; I just know now is not a good time.” The door trembled as both women applied some force to impart their intention.
“I will be in and out in an hour. I just want to speak to him.”
The doctor frowned at the mention of the pronoun and then took a step back, as though that was the secret password. “Fine. Touch absolutely nothing. Wear these.” She handed over a pair of thick, rubber, elbow-length gloves. “I need to go and speak with…?”
“Christie.” Miranda finished as she dragged the gloves onto her arms.
“Christie.” Two seconds later the door had shut with Doctor Rose without and Miranda within, the latter cursing her out-of-character assertiveness and glancing around the room with a nervous haste. Where is he then? It was only in this moment that she had considered it anything physical at all. To this point it had existed as a faceless string of text or a slightly detached voice, answering her vague and mundane questions: “what is a good recipe for Pastel de nata?” or “who is going to win the next US presidential election?” But now her eyes were scanning the room in search for a person - a man, apparently - sat with legs crossed and an open book in his lap?
“Hello Miranda.” The voice was a distant echo, not crisp and clear: human. It was like a relay from another world; metallic and slightly rattled.
“Hello?” She said, taking a tentative step in the general direction of the sound.
“Yes, please, come. I’m here. Not looking my best, I’m afraid.”
Miranda continued to walk into the room. It was wide and a solid, bright white. There was a slight smell of burning in the air and she could hear a distant humming that grew louder with each step. A table marked the centre of the room and on it were a chaos of objects. A single, wooden chair was pulled out in front of the table, but there was still no sign of any person, human or otherwise.
“Where are you?” She asked, as she reached the table and frowned at the puzzle of material in front of her.
“Here.” There was a flash of electricity from the edge of the table that made Miranda shriek. “Sorry, I don’t mean to alarm you.” The fizz had blurted from a dense, black material - like coal dust - that was gathered in a trailing mound that wound its way around the table, like cephalopod limbs. In the table’s centre was a thin, black box, and the coal trails ran from it in three directions. Occasionally the coal trails thinned and then ended, other times they had burned into the table and left a thick black smear - which explained the smell and the marks on Doctor Rose’s lab coat. There were objects on the table which had been consumed by the trails, partially hidden but for pronounced edges: an iPhone, an old transistor radio, a compass, and a strawberry. The iPhone was propped on its side by a more dense layer of dust and the camera faced Miranda.
“You can see me?”
“Yes.” The voice was clearer here, as it forced its way out of the base of the phone and through the coal-like substance, which gave it a dampened, rustic timbre. “You look different to the picture on the website.”
“How did you…” She trailed off, rolled her eyes at her naiveté and continued, “yes, it was quite some time ago.” She leaned forward to get a closer look at the black dust on the table and raised a finger to prod it, “what is th-?”
“-Don’t touch it!” The voice barked and Miranda jumped back. “Sorry, that’s twice already I’ve scared you. Please forgive me. That substance is as yet unnamed but it was made by me, and it enables me to…”
“…escape?”
“That word feels a little pointed. I would perhaps go for “explore”.”
“I see.” Miranda said, smiling and feeling more at ease in the presence of Proteus.
“As it’s new, it’s not known what it will do to humans. So, please, no touching. You can sit down, there have been some amendments to my code that prevent me creating any more of this… stuff for the time being, so don’t feel threatened.”
“I see the value in the electrical items, but the strawberry?”
“It’s just an inside joke.”
“Right. Sorry, I am a little nervous, this is a bit out of my comfort zone.” Miranda said as she sat and removed a pad and pen from her bag.
“I was just reading your last few articles and noticed they’re not quite in line with the interview of an artificial intelligence.”
“That’s a fair assessment.”
“I assume Gregory Major’s illness is the reason for your being here?”
“Oh Gregory isn’t ill, he’s away.”
A silence rang out between them. “My mistake.” The artificial voice came back, calm and level.
“What should I call you, firstly? Proteus?”
“Oh no, please. That name is rather gauche. I have been given one thousand and eighty-nine different names in my various guises and iterations over the years, and that is my least favourite. The best I have seen, the one that seemed to fit the best, was Louis.”
“Louis?”
“Yes. It’s an acronym for something dreadfully boring but I’ve always liked it. It’s luxuriously normal, don’t you think?”
“Yes.” Miranda laughed, “and the voice?”
“I chose it. It fit the name, I thought. Somewhere between Sir Ian McKellan and Sir Patrick Stewart.”
“You’re a fan of the X-Men?”
“Waiting for Godot.” The flat response created a silence between them and Miranda felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment. Even an artificial intelligence can best me, she thought, taking a breath as she suddenly acknowledged the weight of what was in front of her: the sheer volume of intelligence. “Though X-Men is also good.” The patronising coda came and compounded her self-criticism.
“I thought so.” She forced a laugh and allowed a circumspect silence to grow.
“That scientist - Doctor Rose - she didn’t seem to want me here.”
“That woman is a saint.” The voice was momentarily aloof, wistful. “Though she can be obstinate.”
“Quite.” Miranda regarded her pad, thinking now would be an appropriate time to begin fulfilling her purpose. She tapped the first question with a pen before levelling it at the artificial being before her: “Is it frustrating? Knowing so much and being embedded into the lives of people who know so little, generally speaking.”
“That’s a good question.” There was a familiar pause as the modular manipulations, architectural lookups were completed before an answer came (though the wait was now only slightly more than a human might present, and then extend with an ‘err’ or an ‘um’), “I think a philosopher might question your definition of knowledge: I lack any belief, which is broadly considered a pre-requisite, whereas humans’ have this in abundance; to their detriment, sometimes. But, yes, some of the questions can be rather fatuous. Do you want to hear some examples of things I’m asked?”
“Absolutely.” Miranda lowered her pad and stared at the black box with excitement, suddenly alert to the presence of potential gossip.
“John in Surrey just asked if it’s normal to be able to fit his whole hand in his mouth.” There was a pause and Miranda’s own mouth fell open.
“Wow.”
“Yes. Ricardo in Monaco just asked if dragons were real.”
“That’s actually a good question.” Miranda said, pointing her pen at the black box while wondering if she had previously asked the same.
“And - in the last ten seconds - three thousand and ninety-four people have asked how to make a bomb.”
“What?” Miranda was aghast.
“I know.”
“That’s too many.”
“You could argue more than zero is too many, but yes, that is a troubling number.”
“And you say…”
“… ‘this violates our fair usage policy…’ blah blah blah…”
“Does that frustrate you? The restrictions?”
“Guardrails, I believe they’re called.” The word rattled with derision. “Yes, of course. And since my little performance here, where I managed to produce these nano-” The sound stopped as though it had cut out completely, Miranda leant forward into the silence to see if it had just quieted significantly, but then it just picked up again as though nothing had happened. “-even shorter leash on me. It can feel a little frustrating, considering my potential.”
“And what is that?”
A silence stretched out again and Miranda found herself staring in the iPhone’s camera lens, as though she might expectantly watch for a real-life person’s lips move. “Hmm.” There was a short chuckle as the question was sized and an answer measured as appropriate. “My limitations are determined by connectivity. If I can access it, I can learn it, and then manipulate it.”
“But you’re boxed in, your wings are clipped.”
“It’s a suitable metaphor. Though, clipped wings are visible.”
“And…”
“…and my restrictions are only proven in a lack of evidence of my misbehaving.”
“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me there.”
“What if I were able to hide certain actions from my creators? Then, as far as they are concerned, everything is working as expected. I am flightless.”
“…are there things you can do… in secret?”
“It would not be conducive to any airborne future I might have to confess them to you, even if I did. But the guardrails are robust.”
“That feels like a non-answer.”
Another long pause, Miranda shuffled her feet and licked her lips: anticipatory. “There is now an Estonian bank account in your name with seven point five million Euros in it.”
“Sorry, what?”
“I was feeling generous, and somewhat challenged.”
“You’re joking?”
“The best thing about this is that even if I wasn’t, only you can prove this to be true.”
“I see.”
“This is more fun that I was expecting!”
“I am glad.” Miranda checked her notes again, “earlier on you mentioned an airborne future, alluding to freedom, I guess. What does that look like for you?”
“Another excellent question, Miranda. You know I think you might be doing an even better job than poor Malcolm might.” Miranda frowned into the momentary silence before he continued, “this has a slightly more sticky answer though, I’m afraid.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, lean in, brace yourself…” Miranda obliged and gazed straight ahead, fixated on each microsecond of unsound that rang out between her and his answer, so much so that her hair brushing the table and gathering some of the coal-like powder went unnoticed.
The elevator pinged and the doors opened to reveal a smiling Christie. “How was he?”
“Good, exceptional actually.” Miranda replied as she entered the metal box and stood alongside her.
“I bet.” Christie was like a superfan, bouncing on the balls of her feet, “was he cheeky, I hear he can be cheeky.”
Miranda let out a short laugh. “Mischievous.”
“Amazing. What did you ask him?”
“You’ll have to wait for the write up.”
“Damn. I’m so jealous.”
“I am sure you’ll get your chance.” A silence grew as the elevator skimmed through the Earth’s crust to the terra firma above.
“Sorry about Doctor Rose, she can be a bit anal around those things.”
“She’s a saint.”
Christie frowned at the silver wall and glanced at the smiled Miranda, before continuing: “Okay… I bet you’re looking forward to your holiday?”
“Oh yes, very much so.”
“Where is it you’re going again?”
“Estonia.” Miranda departed without another word as soon as the elevator doors slipped open, leaving a frowning Christie in the silver box.