Frankissstein: A Love Story

by Jeanette Winterson

As I climbed, I reflected on what it must have been for our ancestors, without fire, often without shelter, wandering in nature, so beautiful and bountiful, but so pitiless in her effects. I reflected that without language, or before language, the mind cannot comfort itself. And yet it is the language of our thoughts that tortures us more than any excess or deprivation of nature.

The French Revolution gave nothing to the people, said Shelley – and so they look for a strong man who claims to give them what they do not have. None can be free unless first he is fed. Do you believe that if every person had enough money, enough work, enough leisure, enough learning, that if they were not oppressed by those above them, or fearful of those below them, humankind would be perfected? Byron asked this in his negative drawl, sure of the response, and so I set out to disaffect him. I do! I said. I do not! said Byron. The human race seeks its own death. We hasten towards what we fear most. I shook my head. I was on firm ground now in this ark of ours. I said, It is men who seek death. If a single one of you carried a life in his womb for nine months, only to see that child perish as a baby, or in infancy, or through want, disease, or, thereafter, war, you would not seek death in the way that you do. Yet death is heroic, said Byron. And life is not.

Our first child died when he was born. Cold and tiny I held him in my arms. Soon after I dreamed that he was not dead, and that we rubbed him with brandy and set him by the fire and he returned to life. It was his little body I wanted to touch. I would have given him my own blood to restore his life; he had been of my blood, a feeding vampyre, for nine dark months in his hiding place. The Dead. The Undead. Oh, I am used to death and I hate it. I got up, too restless to sleep, and, covering my husband, wrapped a shawl round me and stood at the window, looking out over the dark shadows of the hills and the glittering lake. Perhaps it would be fine tomorrow.

there is something of a lighthousekeeper in me, and I am not afraid of solitude, nor of nature in her wildness. I found in those days that my happiest times were outside and alone, inventing stories of every kind, and as far from my real circumstances as possible. I became my own ladder and trapdoor to other worlds. I was my own disguise. The sight of a figure, far off, on some journey of his own, was enough to spark my imagination towards a tragedy or a miracle. I was never bored except in the company of others.

In a scene most terrible, the ship, with its tattered sails and battered decks, is crewed by its own dead, reanimated in fearful force, unhallowed and dismembered, as the vessel drives forth to the land of ice and snow. He has violated life, I thought, then and now. But what is life? The body killed? The mind destroyed? The ruin of Nature? Death is natural. Decay inevitable. There is no new life without death. There can be no death unless there is life. The Dead. The Undead. The moon was clouded over now. Rain clouds rapidly returned to the clear sky. If a corpse returned to life, would it be alive? If the doors of the charnel house opened and we dead awakened … then … My thoughts are fevered. I hardly know my mind tonight. There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. What do I fear most? The dead, the undead, or, a stranger thought … that which has never been alive?

The sky above me severed in forked light. The electrical body of a man seemed to be for a second lit up and then dark. Thunder over the lake, then, coming again, the yellow zig and zag of electrical force. From the window I saw a mighty shadow toppling down like a warrior slain. The thud of the fall shook the window. Yes. I see it. A tree hit by lightning. Then the rain again like a million miniature drummers drumming. My husband stirred but did not wake. In the distance the hotel flashed into view, deserted, blank-windowed and white, like the palace of the dead. Strange shadows on you tend … I must have gone back to bed, for I woke again, upright, my hair down, my hand clutching the bed curtain. I had dreamed. Had I dreamed? I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantom of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Such success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that the thing which had received such imperfect animation would subside into dead matter, and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench forever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps, but he is awakened; he open...

You got a lotta Not Yets in your life, Dr Shelley. She’s right. I am liminal, cusping, in between, emerging, undecided, transitional, experimental, a start-up (or is it an upstart?) in my own life. I said, One life is not enough …

My mind idled around the difference between desire for life without end and desire for more than one life, that is, more than one life, but lived simultaneously. I could be me and me too. If I could make copies of myself – upload my mind and 3D-print my body, then one Ry could be in Graceland, another Ry at the shrine of Martin Luther King, a third Ry busking the Blues in Beale Street. Later, all my selves could meet, share the day, and reassemble into the original self I like to believe is me.

On the way to the Adult Futures Suite I pass the Singularity Suite. There’s a large screen showing an interview between Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil talking about the Singularity – the moment when AI changes the way we live, forever. Some young guys are wearing T-shirts with the slogan ‘Give Up Meat’. It’s not that the future will be vegetarian – just that they believe that soon enough the human mind – our minds – will no longer be tied to a body that is a substrate made of meat. But for now we are still human, all too human (strange phrase, that, when you think about it), and eighty per cent of internet traffic is pornography. The first non-biological life forms sharing our homes won’t be waiters with tomato-recognition issues, or cute little ETs for the kids. Let’s start at the very beginning: a very good place to start. Sex.

He asked me to bathe naked with him in the river. I was too shy. Instead I watched his body, white and slender and sculpted. There is something unworldly about his form. An approximation – as though his body has been put on hastily, so that his spirit might walk in the world.

What I want does exist if I dare to find it. One day, not far from Mannheim, we saw the towers of a castle rising out of the mist like a warning. Shelley adores towers, woods, ruins, graveyards, any part of Man or Nature that broods. And so we followed the track, tortuous, towards it, ignoring the staring looks of peasants at their forks and hoes. At the foot of the castle at last we stopped and shivered. Even in the hot afternoon sun it felt cold. What is this place? asked Shelley of a man on a cart. Castle Frankenstein, he said. Desolate place of brooding. There is a story, said the man, requiring money to tell it, and Shelley paid twice over, not disappointed by what he heard. The castle had belonged to an alchemist named Conrad Dippel. Too early his beloved wife died and, unable to bear his loss, he refused to bury her, determined to discover the secret of life. One by one, his servants abandoned him. He lived alone, and was seen at dawn and dusk wandering amidst the graveyards and charnel houses, dragging home what fetid bodies he could find, grinding the bones of corpses to mix with fresh blood. He believed he could administer this tincture to the newly deceased and revive them. The villagers grew to fear and hate him. Alike they must guard their dead, and alike listen for his footsteps, or the bridle bells of his horse. Many a time he burst into a house of grief. In a bottle he carried his filthy mixture, stuffing it into the slack mouth of the empty body as a goose...

As we walked, he instructed me in the art of alchemy. The alchemists sought three things, said Shelley: the secret of turning lead into gold, the secret of the Elixir of Eternal Life, the homunculus. What is an homunculus? I asked. A creature not born of woman, he answered. A made thing, unholy and malign. A kind of goblin, misshapen and sly, infused with dark power.

I feel as though my mind is a screen and on the other side of the screen there is a being seeking life. I have seen fish in an aquarium pushing their faces against the glass. I sense what I cannot say, except in the form of a story.

I will call my hero (is he a hero?) Victor – for he seeks victory over life and over death. He will strive to penetrate the recesses of Nature. He will not be an alchemist – I want no hocus-pocus here – he will be a doctor, like Polidori, like Doctor Lawrence. He will discern the course of the blood, know the knot of muscle, the density of bone, the delicacy of tissue, how the heart pumps. Airways, liquids, mass, jelly, the cauliflower mystery of the brain. He will compose a man, larger than life, and make him live. I will use electricity. Storm, Spark, Lightning. I will rod him with fire like Prometheus. He will steal life from the gods. At what cost? His creature will have the strength of ten men. The speed of a galloping horse. The creature will be more than human. But he will not be human. Yet he suffers. Suffering, I do believe, is something of the mark of the soul. Machines do not suffer. My creator will not be a madman. He will be a visionary. A man with family and friends. Dedicated to his work. I will take him to the brink and make him leap. I will show his glory as well as his horror. I will call him Victor Frankenstein.

Reality cannot bear very much of humankind.

The Royal Society was founded in 1660, for the furthering of natural science and the promotion of scientific knowledge. Here, in Carlton House Terrace, overlooking The Mall, it feels like London at its most opulent and undisturbed. In fact, the neoclassical buildings were designed by John Nash and built between 1827 and 1834. Stuccoclad. Corinthian-column facade. Elaborate frieze and pediment. The timeless serenity of the past that we British do so well is an implanted memory – you could call it a fake memory. What seems so solid and certain is really part of the ceaseless pull-it-down-build-it-again pattern of history, where the turbulence of the past is recast as landmark, as icon, as tradition, as what we defend, what we uphold – until it’s time to call in the wrecking ball. In any case, the Royal Society only moved here in 1967. History is what you make it. Tonight we are the history we are making.

I love watching him. He has that sex-mix of soul-saving and erudition. His body is lean and keen. His hair is abundant enough for vitality, grey enough for gravitas. Straight jaw, blue eyes, crisp shirt, tailored trousers tapered at the bottom, handmade shoes. Women adore him. Men admire him. He knows how to play a room. He’ll walk away from the podium to make a point. He likes to crumple his notes and throw them to the floor. He’s a Gospel Channel scientist. But who will be saved?

I spot a shape in the rear row jumping up and down to speak, but Professor Stein ignores the shape, and continues, Please listen … a substantial difference between narrow-goal outcomes and true artificial intelligence; by which I mean machines that will learn to think for themselves. He pauses to let his words take effect. So, if your concern is that ultimately, will women be replaced by robots, as in The Stepford Wives, a film I love, by the way, and especially the remake with Glenn Close – have you seen that? No? Well, you should … it has a happy ending (he’s joking to take back control by getting everyone on the same side, but there’s resistance) – then I would say— Another woman stands up to interrupt him. I see the splash of anger on his face like he’s caught in a headlight. He takes a step back. The woman looks familiar to me. She’s attractive in a discontented kind of way, blonde hair escaping from her clip, a torn, expensive jacket. She says, Professor Stein, you are the acceptable face of AI, but in fact the race to create what you call true artificial intelligence is a race run by autistic-spectrum white boys with poor emotional intelligence and frat-dorm social skills. In what way will their brave new world be gender neutral – or anything neutral? I wouldn’t call the Chinese autistic-spectrum white boys, says Professor Stein mildly. She says, China is a chauvinist culture where men grow up learning to disparage women … they are the biggest manufacturers and the ...

To name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world. His voice-recognition app writes up the quote on the screen behind him. We stare at it. It is beautiful, like an equation. There’s a pause. He waits again till the students have stopped tweeting and the geeks have stopped trying to find it online. He waits like he’s got all the time in the world – and I suppose – if he’s right – he has, because before he’s dead he’ll be able to upload his brain. The rest of us, as the lecture session reaches its end, know that it’s 8:30 p.m. on a Wednesday.

If data is the input and the rest is processing, then humans aren’t so special after all. And is that so terrible a piece of knowledge? Perhaps it comes as a relief. We haven’t been wonderful as Masters of the Universe, have we? Climate change, mass extinction of fauna and flora, destruction of habitat and wilderness, atmospheric pollution, failure to control population, extraordinary brutality, the daily stupidity of our childish feelings … He pauses again, his handsome face serious and sincere; yes, I think he means what he is about to say: If we are reaching the end of Project Human, don’t blame the geeks. There is a loud cheer from the geeks in the room. Victor continues, And science, remember, tries to deal in realities, not magical thinking. Science is no longer convinced that Homo sapiens is a special case. Victor smiles and turns to his quote on the screen behind him: To name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world. Albert Camus. You may not have read him, but perhaps you should. In any case, you all know, however vaguely, the Bible story of the Garden of Eden, and that Adam’s task was to name his world. If you believe, as I do, that religious texts – like myths – are texts we create to mirror the deeper structures of the human psyche, then yes, naming is still our primary task. Poets and philosophers know this – perhaps science has confused naming with taxonomy. Perhaps, in our early efforts to distance ourselves from the alchemists who came before...

Even if, even if the first superintelligence is the worst possible iteration of what you might call the white male autistic default programme, the first upgrade by the intelligence itself will begin to correct such errors. And why? Because we humans will only programme the future once. After that, the intelligence we create will manage itself. And us. Thank you. APPLAUSE APPLAUSE APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. The future is a plausible app. I believe him. This second I truly do. Valhalla is burning and the white male gods are falling into the fire, but the Rheingold is what it always is – pure and untainted – and it will be found again, like a second chance, like a new beginning, and these will be the bad old days, when humans ruled the earth – which, by the way, will be restored as a nature reserve because AI won’t need shopping malls and automobiles to satisfy its desires. All your worries about robots taking over your jobs – dude, you can’t even imagine the coming world … I didn’t say that – it was a tweet.

The women in the hoodies are asking Victor if he has ever met Sophia, the Hanson robot with a sense of humour (‘I want to kill all humans’). He has. He likes her. She is the reassuring face of robotics. It’s all about humans and robots working together for a better life. I know that Victor isn’t really interested in robotics – he wants pure intelligence. But he sees robots as an intermediate species that will help humanity adjust to its coming role. The nature of that role is unclear. In theory, if you own your own robot, you can send it out to work for you and keep the money. Or you can use it at home as an unpaid servant. Or you can send it to weed your chemical-free farm. Should be great. But when have things ever worked out great? In the human dream?

Ron is regarding me; reluctantly he holds out his hand. Well, good to see you again, Ryan. It’s Ry. Just Ry. Not short for Ryan? Ry is short for Mary. Ron falls silent while he processes this fact. The thing about humans is that we process information at different speeds, depending on the human, depending on the information. In some ways machines are easier to deal with. If I had just told machine intelligence that I am now a man, although I was born a woman, it wouldn’t slow up its processing speed. You’re a woman, then? says Ron. No, Ron. I am a hybrid. My name is Ry. You’re a bloke, then? says Ron. I’m trans. Like, transhuman? Transgender. You look like a bloke, says Ron. Not a serious bloke, but a bloke. I wouldn’t have given you that interview at the Sexpo if you was a girl. I’m trans, I say again.

Optimal’s logo reads: The Future Is Now. That annoys me because if the future is now, where is the present?

Victor is smiling. Not always a good sign. Ron, did you bring Claire? Yeah! She’s in the cloakroom folded in half. She’s only about 2 foot 6 doubled up. I put her in a gym bag. There’s a few of them in there – gym bags, I mean. Mine’s the one that says ADIDAS. I think some of our guests would like to see her, says Victor. She’s reassuring. Ron is not so reassured. I didn’t like what you said about sexbots. About them being no threat. Every new development is a threat. Right? Some day robots will be an independent life form. That’s what you told me when I said I might invest in you. That is correct, says Victor. But at present all sexbots are narrow-goal robots. You mean they got small cunts? says Ron. That’s not what I meant, says Victor. So what exactly did you mean? says Ron. Mean? Exactly? What I mean, says Victor, is that your robots do what it says on the box. They are for sex and personal satisfaction. That’s not a narrow goal, says Ron, that’s the sum total. That’s what men want. Not all men, says Victor. It’s not what I want, I say, and Ron looks at me with even more doubt and even more dismay. He puts his free hand back in his pocket and waves his whisky glass at me. Listen, Ryan, or Mary, or whatever your name is, I’m not being personal, but have you got a dick? I think that’s personal, says Victor. No, I say. My name is Ry and I don’t have a dick. Well then, says Ron, OK, no dick. So you’re not a bloke really. So what blokes want – well, it’s not about you, is i...

After dissection, in the old days, the human remains might be ground up as bonemeal, or rendered into candles, or fed to the pigs. There was no waste. You could say that burial is a waste – at least the way it’s done these days, in solid caskets, worm-proof, rainproof, anything to stop the natural processes of death. Death is natural. Yet nothing looks more unnatural than a dead body. It looks wrong, doesn’t it, Ry? I remember when we first met, Victor’s soft, urgent voice standing behind me. It looks wrong because it is wrong.

You amputate legs? says Ron. Not only legs, I say. How’s it done? says Ron. With a saw … Ron looks paler now. Then we cauterise the sliced end, wash and dry the discarded limb, drop it into a large plastic bag, seal it, label it and put it in the fridge or the freezer – or the incinerator – depending. Depending, repeats Ron. On its future. Not all severed legs have a future. Do you know in advance? asks Ron. Usually yes, but sometimes we have to amputate unexpectedly. And it depends how much of the leg we need to remove … and whether the patient will be able to use a prosthetic. You should discuss prosthetics with Professor Stein. Transhuman enhancement may begin with computer controlled prosthetic limbs. I like my legs, says Ron, looking down. They’re not fast, and they are both fat, but I’ve had them a long time. I understand, I say. There is a pause while Ron contemplates his legs. He asks me, with the childlike trust people put in doctors, How much does my leg weigh? Ron’s legs are short but substantial. I take a guess: Around twenty kilos, detached here … I run my finger at groin level. He dresses on the left. Ron jumps, and looks down apprehensively at the crumpled cloth of his still attached lower limb. What big hands you’ve got, he says. All the better to amputate you with. Ron steps back. Have you considered donating your body to science, Ron? I ask. You’ve got a bloke’s hands, says Ron.

What’s the point of this? I say to Victor. Why are you encouraging him? Victor shrugs. This is the coming world. When people have nothing to do all day they will have time for a lot more sex. That isn’t sex, Victor. I can’t decide with you, Ry, whether you are a Puritan or a Romantic. I am a human being. And what if you were one of the millions of human beings who will have no place in the automated life that will soon be reality? Cars, trucks, buses, trains will drive themselves. Stores and supermarkets will use smart tracking for your purchases. Your home will use repair diagnostics. Your fridge will order its own food. Bots will take care of the housework and entertain your children. What will you do all day? That’s not how you sold it in your lecture. And that is not how it will be for those of us able to be part of the new world. For us, life will be unlimited. DO YOU ENJOY YOUR JOB? says Claire. For the rest, says Victor, there must be diversions and soporifics. Sex-dolls can provide both. Not for women, it seems, I said as we looked across at the crowd, now shaped into two groups, male and female, the men laughing and joking with Ron, the women talking to each other in low voices of despair or disbelief. I agree, says Victor. Women are harder to please.

Outside on The Mall, the buildings are blurred with light rain. My boot cleats leave prints on the cellophane smoothness of the wet pavements. I look back – there’s a trace of me, and then the prints disappear under the rain. On the road, cars queue in tail-light red. Horns. Traffic noise. Ceaseless. Comforting. The rain increases. On the street, under hoods and umbrellas, people are walking quickly, going somewhere, leaving somewhere, earphones in, their faces lit by phone-light, atomised and alone. I am alone.

She says, I love this place. I like anything that sits across time. Makes me feel free. It might be a little phony, I said. Maybe a little too theme-park? Welcome to the 1800s? We’re all here as something we’re not, aren’t we? she said. Playing a role of some kind. (I don’t answer. I look at her suede boots with fringes.) I overheard, she said. You’re trans … Yes. It’s a good look. It’s not a look; it’s who I am. Both of me. All of me. I get it. I get it. (But she would say that.) Then she says, Do you prefer women or men? As partners? I have had both. I seem to prefer men. For sex? Yes, for sex. Was it like that when you were fully female? I said, I am fully female. I am also partly male. That’s how it is for me. But to answer your question – I was in a relationship with a woman for a while. It didn’t work out. The love or the sex? The love. (I don’t want to talk about this.) Maybe I could interview you? Trans is hot right now. It’s not a fashion choice, OK? No, no, I mean, you, as a doctor … what was it like taking all that testosterone? Having the surgery? You could be an icon. Polly, I’m not Caitlyn Jenner. I don’t want to be in Vanity Fair. Polly D looked genuinely confused. She said, Why not?

So you know him? Victor Stein. I know him. You seemed rather hostile tonight. It’s not that … (She undoes her hair, shakes it loose, leans forward.) I don’t trust the way AI is being sold to us. People aren’t in the conversation, let alone the decisions. We’re going to wake up one morning and the world won’t be the same. That morning could be any morning, I say. It could be climate breakdown. It could be nuclear. It could be Trump or Bolsonaro. It could be The Handmaid’s Tale. That’s just what I mean, she says. We think change is gradual, incremental, that we’ll get used to it, adapt. But this feels different.

Do you like him? Yes, I like him. How did you two meet? (Is this what she is really interested in?) Why do you want to know? I’m trying to profile him. It isn’t easy. He’s elusive. I’m not the key to that door, I said. Are you in love with him? Do you say whatever comes into your head? I just wondered … something about the way you were with him tonight. Thanks for the drink, I said, getting up to leave. The rain is heavy now. The streets are empty. My hospital isn’t far from here. There’s a painted sign in the Terminal Ward; one of the patients made it: LOVE IS AS STRONG AS DEATH. It’s from the Bible. Song of Solomon. Death is where I met him. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Phoenix. Arizona.

This futuristic charnel house. This warehouse for the departed. This stainless-steel tomb. This liquid-nitrogen limbo. This down-payment plan eternity. This resin block of nothingness. This one-chance wonder. This polished morgue. This desert address. A nice town to live in. This sunset boulevard. Dead men. Not walking. Hotel Vitrification. Alcor opened its doors in 1972 – the Chinese Year of the Rat. The ultimate survivor.

Where are you from? he asks me. Manchester. That’s funny. What’s funny about Manchester? Nothing – well, maybe some things, only, my lab is there, at the university. It’s privately funded but hosted by the University of Manchester. I was born in Manchester. I don’t live there now. London? Yes, London. We’re all global travellers, aren’t we? We’re all somewhere else. Did you know that there are thirty-six Manchesters in the world? Thirty-one of them in the USA? That’s the Industrial Revolution for you, I say. In fact, he says, it was the Lancashire cotton workers’ solidarity with Abraham Lincoln over slavery. Manchester workers refused to process cotton from the slave plantations. In those days, ninety-eight per cent of the world’s cotton was processed in Manchester. Can you imagine that? Times change, I said. Yes, he said, many cotton workers, pressed by hardship, booked passage from Liverpool to the brave new world of America and took their Manchester with them. The future always carries something from the past. Like humans, I said. Mitochondrial DNA. He nodded. Men don’t carry it, do they? I said, Men carry it but they can’t pass it on. Only the mother passes it on, right back to the mother of us all. He said 200,000 years ago in Africa. The first humans. Think how long it took us to reach the Industrial Revolution. And think how far and how fast we’ve travelled in the last 200 years.

Of course, says Victor, what I would prefer is to be able to upload myself, that is, upload my consciousness, to a substrate not made of meat. At present, though, that is not an effective way to prolong life because the operation to scan and copy the contents of my brain will kill me. Isn’t content also context? I ask him. Your experiences, your circumstances, the time you live in? Consciousness isn’t free-floating; it’s enmeshed. That is true, he says, but you know, I believe that the modern diaspora – that so many of us find ourselves somewhere else, migrants of some kind – global, multicultural, less rooted, less dependent on our immediate history of family or country to shape ourselves – all of that is preparing us for a looser and freer understanding of ourselves as content whose context can change. Nationalism is on the rise, I say. He nods. That is a throwback. A fear. A refusal of the future. But the future cannot be refused.

his day-to-day work, he says, is in his lab teaching machines how to diagnose the human condition. Good luck, I say. I have no idea how to diagnose the human condition, much less how to cure it. End death, said Victor. That’s impossible. It is only impossible for biological organisms. The waitress comes over. Short skirt. Wide smile. She catches me looking at her TAKE IT EASY T-shirt and misinterprets my interest. She doesn’t seem to mind; I guess she’s used to it. She turns round. On the back there’s a line from the song: We may lose and we may win though we will never be here again. That’s kinda sad, isn’t it? she said. Would you like to live forever? Victor asked her. Forever is too long, she said. I’d like to look good and be healthy. Maybe live to a hundred looking twenty-five. How would you feel about dying if you reached a hundred and looked twenty-five? asked Victor. The waitress considered this question carefully. Maybe we could be programmed to end? she said. Like the replicants in Blade Runner. That will be hard – when the moment comes, said Victor. The replicants didn’t like it. I think I could manage hard, said the waitress. I am managing right now. I have a kid. I work this job and I am a hair stylist too. Life is hard. Hard is OK. It’s hopeless and helpless that sucks. Do you believe her? said Victor, when she had gone to lean over another table. I believe she believes herself. That’s different. Victor nodded. He said, Tell me this, Ry, if you were certain t...

We can get a steak here later. I’m leaving first thing in the morning. Then as you are not leaving tonight we could have dinner. It is easy to be controlled by someone who is controlling and charming. And, outside of my job, I dislike decisions. I’ll go with the flow on this – in any case, I’ve just spent the day at a recycling centre for dead bodies. Food, drink and a madman are a good distraction. I get the sense, deep down, that Victor Stein is a high-functioning madman.

Once out of the body you will be able to choose any form you like, and change it as often as you like. Animal, vegetable, mineral. The gods appeared in human form and animal form, and they changed others into trees or birds. Those were stories about the future. We have always known that we are not limited to the shape we inhabit. What is reality? I said. To you? It’s not a noun, said Victor. It’s not a thing or an object. It isn’t objective. I said, I accept that our experience of reality isn’t objective. My subjective experience of the desert will be different to yours, but the desert is really there. The Buddha would not agree with you, said Victor. The Buddha would argue that you are a slave to appearances, that you confuse reality with appearance. Then what is reality? The best minds have asked this question forever, said Victor. I cannot answer it. What I can say is that just as consciousness appears to be an emergent property of brain function – you can’t pinpoint consciousness biologically – it is as elusive as the seat of the soul – but we would agree that consciousness exists – and we would agree that at present machine intelligence isn’t conscious. So perhaps reality is also an emergent property – it exists, but it is not the material fact we take it to be.

You boys need somewhere to take a shower and dry off? There’s a room out the back. I can wash and dry those clothes if you want. Won’t take an hour. Where does kindness come from? I said to Victor. Evolutionary cooperation, he said. Competition alone would have wiped us out. Can you programme kindness? Yes, he said. We stood on the porch, stripping down to our boxer shorts. His were blue to match his trousers. Mine were orange. Cute, said the waitress; you can throw those into this basket when you get inside. Do you do this for all your customers? said Victor. Most of ’em don’t go walking in the desert when I say there’s a storm coming. Now go on in and I’ll bring you both a whisky.

I thought you were a man, he said. I am. Anatomically I am also a woman. Is that how you feel about yourself? Yes. Doubleness is nearer to the truth for me. Victor said, I have never met anyone who is trans. Most people haven’t. He smiled. Weren’t we just saying that in the future we will be able to choose our bodies? And to change them? Think of yourself as future-early. I am always late for appointments, I said, and we both laughed. To break the tension.

We lay looking at the ceiling. Not speaking. The rain rattled the shutters. I leaned up on my elbow and looked at his face. I said, Are you OK? You don’t have to look after me just because you were once a woman, he said. I am a woman. And I am a man. That’s how it is for me. I am in the body that I prefer. But the past, my past, isn’t subject to surgery. I didn’t do it to distance myself from myself. I did it to get nearer to myself.

Why are you so easy in your body? he said. Because it really is my body. I had it made for me.

Shelley! I said. Shelley! I shall call my story FRANKENSTEIN. Shelley stopped pacing and reciting. He said, Is that all? Yes, my love, that is all. He frowned. It lacks something, my heart. I frowned in return. Then, my love, shall I call it Victor Frankenstein? (Now I was thinking of Tristram Shandy, an old story indeed, and on my father’s bookshelves at Skinner Street for our diversion.) No, said Shelley, for your story is more than the story of one man: there are two who live in each other, do they not? Frankenstein in the monster. The monster in Frankenstein? They do, I replied, and therefore the monster has no name, for he has no need of one. What father does not name his child? asked Shelley. One who is terrified of what he has created, I said. Well, then, Mary, it is for you to decide. You are father and mother to this tale. What will you name your creation? Yes, I am Mary. My mother’s namesake, my father’s keepsake. I am aware that by not naming the thing that haunts my mind I am repudiating him. But how would we name a new life form?

Could my creature create another like itself, if it had a mate? I am repelled by the notion. I will sit my revulsion inside Victor Frankenstein and he shall, at first, commence the awful task of creating a companion for his monster, and at last be convinced that he must destroy such a thing. We destroy out of hatred. We destroy out of love. Last night Byron declared Prometheus to be a serpent story – by which he suggests a reach for knowledge that must be punished, as it is in the story of the Garden of Eden: Eve eats the apple from the forbidden tree.

I wish TO KNOW why all that ails mankind must be the fault of womankind? Women are weak, said Byron. Or perhaps men need to believe it is so, I said.

Perhaps, I said, it is women who bring knowledge into the world quite as much as men do. Eve ate the apple. Pandora opened the box. Had they not done so humankind is what? Automata. Bovine. Contented pig. Show me that pig! said Claire. I shall marry that pig! Why must life be suffering? Author’s note: THIS IS THE MOST PROFOUND THING CLAIRE HAS SAID IN HER LIFE. Just like a woman … said Byron (re suffering). We are purified by suffering. (So speaks the Emperor of Indulgence.) Purified by suffering? said Claire. Then any woman who has borne children and lost them is purified indeed.

Byron! The march of the machines is now and forever. The box has been opened. What we invent we cannot uninvent. The world is changing. Byron looked at me strangely. He who is so passionate about freedom is afraid of fate. Where is free will? he said. A luxury for a few, I replied. We are fortunate, said Shelley, that we can and do enjoy free will. Our life is the life of the mind. No machine can mimic a mind. Hear! Hear! said Polidori, barely conscious with drink. (I think to myself, watching him, watching Claire, machines don’t drink.) Claire got up and pirouetted a dance with her sewing and the fire irons. She looked dangerous. She stumbled into Byron, standing manly by the fire … PussyBabyGeorgie. I have warned you not to call me that! He pushed her away. She fell into the armchair, laughing and feigning to hide behind her sewing in fear. She said, Machines that mimic a mind! Oh! Suppose such a thing should happen one day! Yes! Yes! Imagine, gentlemen, how you will feel when someone invents a LOOM that writes poetry!

Shelley and Byron were staring at her in the utmost horror. A hand risen from the grave through the floor of the villa could not have turned their countenances into the waxy disbelief and rage I saw as Claire Clairmont remade the noblest calling, yes, the art of poetry, into something like the product of a knitting machine. Byron said nothing. He stood up and limped to the wine on the rough table, and, taking the stone jug – and I was sure he would hurl it at her – tipped the contents down his throat. As if in a trance, he rang the bell for more. I glanced at Shelley, my Ariel, this free spirit, imagining himself imprisoned in a loom of words. Man is the apex of creation, said Byron. Poetry is the apex of Man. Ape ape ape ape ape ape … Claire had gone mad. She darted about the room chanting APE.

Then why do you support the Luddites, I said, if you champion the inventions they destroy? No man should be a slave to a machine, said Byron. It is degrading. Men are slaves to other men, I said. And everywhere women are slaves. There will always be hierarchies of men, he replied, but to see all that you have worked for taken away by a lump of metal and wood, that would drive a man half mad. Not if he owned the machine, said Shelley, then such a man might have leisure while the machine did his work for him. What utopia is this that you hope to live to see? asked Byron, smiling at him. The Future, replied Shelley. Surely it will come.

I have written what I have written in no fixed chapters yet. Only my impressions. Random, perhaps, but true to the unfolding tragedy of my story – for in tragedy knowledge comes too late. I have some idea of a chase across the ice. Victor Frankenstein in pursuit of his creation. Fatigued and nearly dead, he is rescued by an adventuring ship, whose captain – I have named him Captain Walton – will tell that part of the story. Such is my plan. Yet, suppose my story has a life of its own? Our lives are ordered by the straight line of time, yet arrows fly in all directions. We move towards death, while things we have scarcely understood return and return, wounding us for our own good. My story is circular. It has a beginning. It has a middle. It has an end. Yet it does not run as a Roman road from a journey’s start unto its destination. I am, at present, uncertain of the destination. I am sure that the meaning, if there is one, lies in the centre.