LITMIR.BIZ

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There are no classes in here after lunch, which feels less like luck than fate: giving me somewhere that I actually want to go, where nobody else will be. Sometimes there will be some people working on geography coursework or something, but usually I’m alone. Or maybe one of the Michaels will be in there, but if they are, they’re playing Civilization, and they don’t pay any attention to what I’m up to.

      Mr Ryan is there, as well. He used to be a software designer. He started off working for IBM in America, then a few other companies. You can still hear the American in his accent, sometimes. When he says, Sure. That’s a dead giveaway. Shore, shore. And, amazingly, he’d heard of my dad. He showed me an article about him in a book one time: ‘Daniel Bow, programming our intelligent future!’

      Mr Ryan was the first person I ever told about Organon. He sat there, nodding away – that’s a real teacher tactic, to sit and nod; and sometimes, to do this cat’s cradle thing with the hands, under the chin – and then he rubbed his beard and stretched open his mouth, as if he was yawning. That’s when he offered to help me with the coding, if I needed it. He’s not as good as some of the coders I’ve found on the Internet, but it’s useful, having somebody to show my work to.

      He’s sitting behind his desk when I walk in. A few Year 9 girls are here doing a project, laughing at something on the screen. There’s a photograph of a cat, and they’re drawing over it with the painting software. Giving it eyebrows. Mr Ryan rolls his eyes at them, and that makes me smile. It’s good. He acts like I’m a proper human, even though I’m into this stuff. Some teachers are funny about it, when you tell them that you want to work with computers. Shouldn’t you be outside and doing something more productive, all that stuff. Yeah: because running’s a job.

      ‘You going to show me where you’re up to with her?’ He calls Organon her. I’ve always assumed it’s an It. Seems a bit weird to think of it as a boy or a girl. ‘Show me what she’s got?’ I plug the zip drive into the back of the main computer, and start copying the file over. The little bar creeps along.

      ‘I didn’t get much done last week,’ I say. ‘Too much homework.’

      ‘But you got some?’

      ‘A little bit.’ I don’t say: Oh my God so much and I don’t want to tell you how much but in order to achieve it I nearly broke myself. Almost every night I get three hours or so in, when the rest of the house has gone to bed. I’m averaging six hours’ sleep. I think it’s enough. Apparently, Churchill only slept for five hours a night, and he ran a country. He fought a war, and what am I doing? I’m coding a therapist and rushing through my homework.

      ‘What say we open her up, look at her code?’

      ‘I suppose,’ I say. He likes to see how I built the software. He always says how out of touch he is, how the languages have moved along since his day. I don’t tell him that I learned all of this from books that used to be my dad’s, so they’re aeons old anyway. Probably the ones that Mr Ryan used, back in the day. He doesn’t get to see the databases, though. None of the stuff I’ve written into Organon, the things it’s given me advice on. They’re on the computer at home. I don’t let those out of the house.

      ‘So, where are we?’ I like Mr Ryan, but he says we like Organon’s the combined effort of our ideas. He’s helped me, and I’ll thank him if I ever manage to do anything with this, but Organon is mine. ‘Is she learning?’

      ‘It’s asking more questions. I’ve changed the parameters about when it can ask you stuff, interrupt, things like that.’

      ‘But you’re programming the words in?’

      ‘Obviously,’ I say. We had an argument, a few weeks after I first showed him Organon. He told me it wasn’t an actual artificial intelligence, and I told him he was wrong. Because it is: it understands what questions to ask, and when to ask them; when it’s gone too far, and when it’s not gone far enough. All the work I’ve done, it’s about understanding. Trying to make it understand when it can help, and how it can help. I explained that to Mr Ryan, and he said, But that’s not an AI. An AI can play chess, or it’ll launch nukes or something. He smiled then, but I didn’t think it was very funny. I had to explain that everything is artificial intelligence, really. Every bit of software. He didn’t understand, though, because Organon doesn’t do the things he expects. I didn’t say: Well, that’s how long it’s been since you’ve worked in software, then; and how little you actually understand. The week after that, I caught him reading Ray Kurzweil.

      We haven’t had that discussion again since.

      ‘This thing’s amazing.’ He sits down, nudges me slightly to one side. He points his fingers – bitten-down fingernails, and I bite my fingernails, but not like this, these are right down to the quick, horrible stubby things digging into the flesh – at the code. ‘This is where you put the questions in?’

      ‘Yeah,’ I say, and he breathes in, nods along a few times. Puts his fingers up to his lips, like he’s making the shape of a gun, the barrel at his mouth. He’s got something to ask, and I know I’m not going to like it, because he’s nervous, but I can’t stop him.

      ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. How I might actually be of, you know, real help. To you; to Organon. In the real world, software goes through beta testers.’ He pronounces it bayder. ‘So, you get people to use it, to work with it. Let it do its thing, and you get to use the results. That’s how you can make it better, you know? I’m thinking that it could be useful to you.’ He wants me to give Organon over to him. Shit, shit. I don’t know what to say. He’s a teacher. He’s a teacher, and he knows about this stuff, but I want to say no. I want to. ‘So,’ he says, and I wonder: can he tell that I’m not happy about this? Because I’m trying to make my body tell that to him as much as I can. ‘So why not let me take her home. Let me try her out, as she’s meant to be tried. It’ll be useful, because I’ll get to see what she’s really capable of, and you’ll give her a chance to stretch her legs.’

      All I can think is, there’s something really icky about him talking about it as a her.

      ‘I don’t know,’ I say. I don’t say: I don’t want you to, and I don’t need you to. My elbow, the scar there, itches. I can feel it scabbing over; the skin trying to heal, trying to grow back as something like what it used to be. Something like itself.

      ‘I think you’ll really benefit from it. I might try something that you haven’t expected, find a bug you didn’t know about. And it’ll be so much easier for me to write you a recommendation when you’re doing your UCAS forms, if I know exactly what you’re capable of.’ There it is. The bribe. It’s hard to get onto programming courses if you don’t have experience, and he’s worked in computers. His support on my application would probably help. ‘Besides which, I might get some benefit from talking to her! That’s the point of Organon, right? Real world experience, Laura.’ I don’t know what he’d want to talk to it about. There are rumours about him, but there are rumours about every teacher. And his aren’t nearly as nasty as some about the other members of staff. Some of them, the rumours never end, and they escalate. But Mr Ryan seems like he’s pretty together. But then, he’s not married, and he is pretty old. Mum’s age, I think. Flecks of grey in his beard. ‘Listen, it’s your project, Laura. You do what you want. But sometimes we can’t see the wood for the trees, and we need somebody who might be able to give us a pair of binoculars and an axe.’

      ‘Okay,’ I say. My elbow kills when I say it, and when he smiles, this beaming thing, bigger than I’ve ever seen from him before.

      ‘You won’t regret it,’ he tells me. ‘Seriously, a bit of time with her, little play with her code—’ He must see my face then, because he changes his words straight away. ‘I can write some notes for you, give you some suggestions for what you do moving forward. That’s it.’

      ‘Thanks,’ I say. He shifts back in his chair, leaving the keyboard free for me, and I open up Organon. The white room, the fade in of the text box.

      > What would you

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