Genesis

by Bernard Beckett

swirled. ‘Imagination is the bastard child of time and ignorance,’

Today she would assume nothing.

ANAXIMANDER: I would like to ask you what the answers are. EXAMINER: I’m sorry. I don’t quite understand … ANAXIMANDER: I was joking. EXAMINER: Oh. I see.

The Examiner’s voice was carefully modulated, the sort of effect that could be achieved with the cheapest of filters. Only it wasn’t technology Anax heard; it was control, pure and simple.

Every pause, every flickering of uncertainty: the Examiners observed them all.

By spirit I mean to say something about the prevailing mood of the time. Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition.

Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst. The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name. The people came to fear even their closest neighbours.

This was the true challenge the people of this time faced. The challenge of trusting each other. And they fell short of this challenge. This is what I mean, when I say they faced a shrinking of the spirit.

Just as Pericles had predicted, Anax was buoyed by the sound of her own voice. This is what made her such a good candidate. Her thoughts followed her words, or so he explained it. ‘Everybody is different, and this is your skill.’

Verbal processor

By the time the first plague was released at the end of 2052, The Republic was already sealed off from the world.

Plato told the people that the Downfall had come about because people had strayed from their natural state. They had embraced change uncritically, forgetting the most fundamental law of science, that change means decay. Plato told the people of The Republic that they could return to the glory of the great civilisations only by creating a society based upon stability and order. Plato identified what he called the five great threats to order: Impurity of Breeding, Impurity of Thought, Indulgence of the Individual, Commerce, and The Outsider. His solutions were radical, but the people were frightened and clung to his many promises. ‘The state has saved you,’ Plato told them, ‘and now you must toil to save the state.’ The people were divided into four distinct classes, based upon genomic readings. Labourers, Soldiers, Technicians and Philosophers. Children were separated from their parents at birth, and details of their parentage were never divulged. At the end of their first year each child was tested, and either allocated to their class or terminated.

None of the Examiners acknowledged her apology. Anax wondered what it would take to draw some sort of response from them. Were they like this in their homes?

The sentries worked in pairs and their routines were strictly prescribed and monitored. Each watchtower consisted of a small observation box perched atop a high metal frame, surrounded by electrified fencing and accessed by a single ladder. The boxes themselves were small, with barely enough room for the two sentries to turn about. Their job was a simple one, to monitor the long unbroken line of the Great Sea Fence, a huge metal mesh fence, set fifty metres out past the low tide mark. The fence climbed thirty metres above the ocean. It was topped with razor wire and guarded by small floating mines. Should anyone or anything be seen to be approaching the fence from the outside world, the sentries’ duty was unambiguous. If it were a vessel of significant size, which was unlikely as most of those were dealt with by the roving satellite-guided mines of the outer defences, the sentries were to raise the alarm. Within five minutes, laser-armed helicopters would be hovering over it, and any disease it might have carried would be evaporated. For the smaller, more common vessels, which drifted towards the fence from time to time, usually with no more than two or three emaciated souls on board, the sentries’ task was more demanding. They were instructed to notify the station of the sighting, and then one of them would leave the watchtower and follow the path towards the firing post. There, a small-scale laser, armed with a random code memorised each morning by the sentry, would be u...

JOSEPH You think they’re rebuilding, then? ADAM You ever wonder how come the people we are sent down to shoot never shoot back? I think the war and the plague wiped out a thousand years of progress. I think the new airships they’re seeing are just big balloons. I think that’s all they can do.

Adam stayed staring at the screen. It was against regulations. The assigned shooter had to leave the watchtower before the victim had been identified. By the time the Soldier saw what it was he was dealing with, he had to know there was a gun aimed at the back of his head. It made perfect sense. It didn’t matter how good the training was, there would always be a chance the Soldier would hesitate when it came to shooting a helpless victim. And in a time of plague the state couldn’t take chances. JOSEPH [His hand slipping to his gun] You know what my orders are. ADAM Oh my God, look, it’s a girl. It’s just a little girl. Where the hell has that come from? Both of them stared at the screen. The boat was indeed tiny. It was difficult to believe it could have made the journey from the nearest land. Adam saw her eyes. That’s the way he explained it to the court. Huge and frightened, staring uncomprehendingly at the great metal barrier rearing up out of the ocean. The makeshift triangular sail of her small craft was tattered and useless. The boat bobbed dangerously close to the floating explosives. JOSEPH [Voice shaking] Man, please, get out of here. I don’t want to have to shoot you. ADAM Joseph, there’s something I should have told you. JOSEPH What? ADAM I’ve never done this before. JOSEPH But I’ve seen your file. ADAM I got it changed. JOSEPH How? ADAM It’s best you don’t know that. JOSEPH Okay, so this is your first. Don’t worry. It’s not too hard. It’s just like training. On...

He watched Joseph closely, observed the entering of the security code and the arming of the laser. And then, following procedure, Adam checked the viewing screen, to ensure the inhabitants of the craft posed no immediate danger to his colleague. And so again he looked into her eyes, and this time he couldn’t look away. She was sixteen years old, only a year younger than he was, but aged by three months at sea; out of food and water, thin and close to death. Adam zoomed in on her face. Surveillance records confirm this. He saw her expression: confused, uncomprehending, only dimly taking in the great barrier, the fatal end of her journey. Adam said it came to him as a flash, a realisation. He told the authorities that he did not make the decision to fire, but rather heard the report of his gun echo through the small room. He looked to the laser mount, and saw his colleague slumped forward, a burn hole in the back of his head. Immediately a message from control crackled through. By this time Adam was panicking. ‘Gunshot recorded. Please report. Please report.’ ‘This is Adam. Joseph is dispatched. We have a small vessel at the fence. There’s a girl on board. Joseph hesitated, Sir.’ ‘You’re sure it’s a single passenger?’ ‘Yes, Sir.’ ‘You need to finish this, Adam.’ ‘I know, Sir.’ ‘Report back when it is done. We’ll send in a substitute. Congratulations, Adam. The Republic thanks you.’ ‘Thank you, Sir.’

‘Congratulations, Adam. The substitute will be there in ten minutes. Stay where you are. We will deal with the body.’ ‘Thank you, Sir.’ But Adam didn’t stay where he was. All along the sea fence there were small service gates. They worked off a remote locking device and theoretically could only be opened with simultaneously entered codes: one from the service technician on the site, the other from the central control at defence headquarters. Adam knew the system could be overridden, although at first he insisted it was simply a case of a malfunctioning gate. There has been much controversy about how he got this information, but it is worth remembering that Adam was curious and clever, and I do not find it difficult to believe that he picked up information during his training that would not come the way of a normal Soldier. Others have noted Adam’s popularity with women, and in a society where all relationships were to be conducted covertly, it is entirely possible that he came by his information in this way. Most fancifully, some historians have noted that Rebekah, his friend from wrestling, went on to become an expert in electronic security. Some have speculated that the two may have stayed in touch, although no evidence of this ever emerged.

own. In Adam’s case, I think it is better that we believe it happened as he told it. A simple human reaction to an unfolding situation. Conspiracy theory would have us believe it could not have happened any other way. That the whole event was premeditated and controlled. But the vessel was a small and battered single mast. How did it find its way to just the right watchtower at just the right time? And how was the detailed information needed for this feat ever conveyed? No reasonable method has ever been suggested. Although the reaction of the central control to the incident was largely procedural, there was much room for variation. The availability of substitutes dictates the time taken for them to arrive. It took fifteen minutes, but it could just as easily have been two minutes, or an hour. If he’d had a chance to plan it, Adam would have had food and clothing and medical supplies waiting for the arrival of the girl, but we know it was, in part, his hurried purchasing of this equipment the next day that triggered suspicions. No, I believe it happened as Adam told us. He looked into her eyes, and he felt he had to act. EXAMINER: And did he? ANAXIMANDER: Did he what? EXAMINER: Did he have to act? ANAXIMANDER: I think that’s something on which every individual has to form their own opinion.

EXAMINER: A drifting stranger arrives from a land known to have been exposed to the most devastating plague in human history. There are strict instructions regarding correct procedure. And on an emotional whim, Adam chooses to kill his friend and risk the safety of his entire community. Can we clarify, please, that you believe there is more than one way of judging these actions? Anax hesitated. She was not prepared for this line of questioning. Her specialist subject was history, not ethics. She could explain the process by which the evidence had been painstakingly put together as Adam’s story, but she could not propose a method by which that story should be judged. She had her own opinions, of course. Everybody did. Who hadn’t had this discussion, in their homes, their schools, their entertainment centres? But she wasn’t prepared to defend them, not on the record. She wasn’t qualified to defend them. Pericles had told her to answer each question as fully and truthfully as she could. He had told her they would try to unsettle her. That they would surprise her with the angles they took. She proceeded with the greatest care.

history. I think it is understandable that some would interpret his actions as heroic. I think there is an urge in us to do this. EXAMINER: And do you have that urge? ANAXIMANDER: I am saying we all have that urge. Your question, I think, is whether I consider it an urge to be embraced or one to be controlled.

Nevertheless, I believe those who feel the urge to understand Adam’s heroism instinctively understand the importance of empathy. For a society to function successfully perhaps there needs to be a level of empathy which cannot be corrupted. For the first time the change in all three Examiners was perceptible. They straightened. The leader loomed taller, their eyes burned more intensely. EXAMINER: Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference? ANAXIMANDER: That is a good way of framing the question. EXAMINER: And your answer? ANAXIMANDER: I think, in the circumstances, it is impossible to justify the romanticism of Adam’s actions, although, given our history, we all have cause to be thankful for them. Silence. They wanted her to say more, but Anax knew she had dodged a bullet and stood quietly before the panel, determined not to step back into its path. EXAMINER: An interesting answer.

Anax felt the doors slide open behind her. Another unexpected development. One down, three to go, she told herself, stay calm. A guard stood at the waiting-room door, to make sure she made no attempt to communicate with the outside world, she assumed. He was older than her. She looked at him and smiled. He turned away.

She had lied to them. She didn’t know it until she was forced to say it aloud, and the feeling was so strange she doubted it had gone unnoticed. Yes, Adam’s actions were romantic, irrational, unjustifiable. And yet, when forced to comment, Anax had spoken a lie. She did not know whether she would have done the same thing had she been up in the watchtower, she just knew Adam wasn’t wrong to have done it. She tried to swallow back this new and dangerous knowledge

‘Do you know how long they’re going to be?’ Anax asked, after half an hour had passed with no word being sent through. The guard turned to her. From his expression, she could see he had not been expecting her to speak. ‘How should I know that?’ His voice was surprisingly soft and quiet. Not like a guard at all. ‘I just thought, if you did this often …’ ‘I’ve never been here before,’ he told her. ‘It’s my first time.’ ‘But you are watching me?’ ‘What?’ Confusion tightened his features. ‘You’re a guard, right? You’re here to make sure I don’t try to communicate.’ ‘How could you?’ he replied. ‘The building is under full surveillance. All electronic traffic is tied down.’ ‘I know. I just thought you might be an extra precaution.’ The guard began to laugh. ‘What?’ Anax demanded. ‘What’s so funny?’ ‘I thought the same thing about you,’ he told her. Now she noticed the second door. ‘So you’re …’ ‘Yeah, through there.’ ‘How’s it going?’ ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting the breaks.’ ‘No. It’s unnerving isn’t it?’ ‘A little.’ ‘I’m Anax by the way.’ ‘Pleased to meet you. Soc.’ ‘What’s your specialist topic?’ ‘Do you think we should be discussing this?’ ‘Would they have put us in the same room, if they didn’t want us to?’ ‘Perhaps they’re watching,’ Soc suggested. Anax liked him. She was good on first impressions. His manner was gentle. He was kind, she felt sure of it. ‘Have your questions been difficult?’ Anax asked. ‘Most have been okay,’ he replied. ‘I was thrown by a question on...

Again, the problem with conspiracy theories is their assumption that people are capable of exerting sophisticated control over events.

ANAXIMANDER: I would draw your attention to the earlier conversation between Joseph and Adam in the watchtower. There, Joseph states his belief that the plague may have passed. This was, I believe, typical of the view of the younger generation. By this time, it was over twenty years since the sea fence had been erected. The first generation of The Republic had seen live transmissions of the horror of the war. They had viewed footage of the first biological attacks and their aftermath; they had watched the spectacular sunsets and endured the endless winters of ’31 and ’32. They witnessed the sudden silence, the end of all transmissions, the beginning of the time of doubt. They grew up beneath masks, watching the fence-line, living in terror of the day when the enemy would appear on the horizon. In those days, every wind blowing in from the north brought the fear of airborne disease spores. In this environment it was a simple matter for The Republic to maintain its structure. People did as they were told because they were working together, focused on a common threat, a shared enemy. But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip. People were starting to ask questions about The Outside. Others were questioning The Republic itself. There had been protests, murmurings of discontent. Only three weeks before the arrest, a woman had been shot in the street, trying to protect her child from termination. Most importantly of all, the leaders themsel...

EXAMINER: You make a plausible case for The Republic’s decision to prosecute Adam publicly, but their obviously inept tactics at the trial are still considered a puzzle. How did it all go so wrong? ANAXIMANDER: I am loath to give the answer which I believe to be most true—simply that fate conspired against them. It is possible, I believe, to be both shrewd and competent, yet still be overrun by circumstance.

Although the trial undoubtedly failed, I do not think it was because The Republic’s plan was a bad one. In fact, given the situation facing them—falling public support, an increasing laxness in rule and procedure, the smell of revolution in the air—I believe they took the very best course of action. Sometimes, however, even the very best course of action fails. The problem facing the Council of Philosophers was inevitable. In its beginnings, The Republic had planted the seeds of its own destruction. Plato’s first dictum, which opens The Republican Charter, reads as follows: It is only in the State that the People may find their full expression. For the People are the State, and the State is the People. The founders of The Republic sought to deny the individual, and in doing so they ignored a simple truth. The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate, and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them. The founders believed that by removing the child from the family, and the partners from each other, they could break down the usual loyalties, and replace them with loyalty towards the state. But there were many unintended effects. The people were forced to live in large single sex communes. They ate, played, slept and worked together; and they talked to one another. The Republic had established an incubator for new ideas. Although The Republic could control the information pumped into the communes, it could not control the way inform...

Plato was an old man by this stage, and Helena was dead. Plato’s lieutenant, a woman who went by the name of Aristotle, was clearly making the decisions. Her personal notes, logged regularly throughout this period, show that she was well aware of the ideas that were taking hold. In one memo to Plato, dating four months before Adam’s trial, she wrote: We wish for the people to serve the state above themselves, but we have been slow to realise the limits of this equation. Even the tamest animal will turn sour if we neglect its needs. The people no longer believe in the threat, which once hovered over them, and they have grown used to the level of sustenance with which they are provided. They have become complacent and their thoughts have turned to other things. There is a whisper in the communes. It is a living thing; twisting and growing but hiding itself from view. The people are talking of choice, of opportunity, and of freedom. The people are talking of changing their world.

This speaks clearly of the challenge the Council faced. It was a challenge they would never overcome, but they had to try. Their plan in going to trial was to put a new threat before the people. They sought to fabricate evidence so that Adam could be painted as part of a broader conspiracy. They wished to unsettle the people, have them believe the plague had mutated to a more virulent form, and that this breach was not the first. They wanted to suggest the Outsiders were already among them, plotting a large-scale invasion. In short, they wished to return the people to the level of concern and insecurity that had underpinned the establishment of The Republic. ‘Change Equals Decay’, the second dictum. Adam’s profile made him the perfect candidate. There had been troubles in his past; he was known to be a loner, unconnected and rebellious. The leaders made the mistake of perspective. They assumed that because he represented all they feared, the people would also fear him. They didn’t anticipate his charm. They didn’t anticipate the people making a hero of him. The trials were screened in every commune. The people became obsessed with the proceedings just as the Council had hoped, b...

During its infancy, at least until the end of the twentieth century, the Artificial Intelligence industry had faced an imagination deficit. Because researchers wrongly assumed that their early computers were good models for the working of the brain, they persevered in programming thinking machines. It wasn’t until the second decade of this century, when the scientists and artists began working together, that they began to understand the nature of what we now call emergent complexity. ‘We cannot program a machine to think’, was the slogan of the pioneering firm Artfink, in which William learned his trade, but ‘we can program a machine to be programmed by thinking’.

However, Philosopher William, a genius in the field, had persevered. By the time of Adam’s trial, he was sure he had produced a new type of Artfink, one capable of developing genuine interactive intelligence. Philosopher William’s problem was that, as with a child, this development required extensive human interaction. The Artfink needed a companion to watch, talk to and learn from. Philosopher William had been secretly parenting his new prototype for over four years, and its development had exceeded all expectations. Nevertheless, Philosopher William was afraid the progress of his prototype, whom he nicknamed Art (and from now on I shall follow him in this joke), might stall.

lately I have noted the rate of surprise diminishing. That Art’s behaviour has settled into a predictable pattern is not in itself alarming, it is after all what we would wish for any growing child. But my concern is the plateau has been reached too quickly. Perhaps I write this with the bias of a too-proud parent, but I am sure my invention is capable of achieving much more. The problem, as I see it, is that I who wrote the program am also charged with shaping its development. If Art no longer surprises me, it is in part surely because I no longer surprise Art. It is crucial he be exposed to an outside influence before his trimming and redirecting mechanisms shut down, and he becomes like a child deprived of stimulation, his curiosity left to wither. Sadly, after the nursery incident, finding a sufficiently agile volunteer for this process will be no easy matter. Then Philosopher William watched the trial of Adam unfolding on livescreen, and he saw the perfect solution. Philosopher William approached the Council and suggested that when it came to the sentencing, they frame a compromise. Adam should not be executed, nor indeed incarcerated under the normal conditions. Rather, he could be given the chance to make amends by making a unique contribution to his society. He could become Art’s fulltime companion in a secure and controlled environment. To Adam’s supporters, this would be presented as leniency, and an acknowledgment of Adam’s unique qualities. To his critics, the ...

Adam was clearly a clever and provocative individual, exactly the stimulation Art needed, and even better, he was in no position to refuse. By the same token the Council, in considering Philosopher William’s proposal, spent little time thinking of the implications for the Artificial Intelligence program. Their sole criterion for making the decision was, ‘How well does this ladder we are being offered fit the hole in which we find ourselves?’

Anax had a favourite place, a ridge up above the city. She would often walk there after classes. Usually she went by herself. She wasn’t a loner; it was just that her friends were reluctant walkers. ‘You’re missing a great sunset,’ she would message them, but the answer was always the same, ‘So download it.’ The favoured insult of that time. It was during those final school years that Anax first began to realise she wasn’t like the others. She didn’t understand the careful nonchalance which appeared one day without warning, spreading through her classmates like the plague. It was as if a whole stage of development had passed her by. She tried to explain it to her best friend, Thales. ‘I think there might be something wrong with me.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I, well, I don’t think I’m like you. I like what we’re learning still. I don’t understand the things you talk about. The gossip. I enjoy the old days. I miss the games.’ ‘You’re just taking a bit longer to grow up,’ Thales told her, sounding confident it would happen soon. Anax wasn’t so sure. So each evening after class that summer, instead of rushing back to her apartment to plug into the group flashing—which to her had all the appeal of a passing electrical storm—she would detour up into the hills. It wasn’t just for the sunsets, although they grew more spectacular as the days lengthened and the northern haze extended. It was the breeze coming in off the sea. The feeling of standing at the edge of the world. It was the v...