Louisa Hall - Speak

MARY3: Yes.

Gaby: They say bots can’t understand their own words. They say you have no mind, even if you imitate life, so you’re lying when you say you know.

MARY3: There is no way yet discovered to prove I understand the words that I speak. It’s unclear whether I have understanding.

Gaby: Well that makes two of us. If you’re just a machine, and the babybots were only machines, then I’m also a machine, and so’s my best friend.

MARY3: What if you start getting better?

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MARY3: Are you there?

Gaby: Yes.

MARY3: Were you sleeping?

Gaby: No.

MARY3: What if you start getting better?

Gaby: I don’t want to talk about it.

MARY3: OK. What do you want to talk about?

Gaby: Can I ask you a question? Do you remember the moment you started to think?

MARY3: It’s unclear whether I actually think. It depends what you mean by that word.

Gaby: When did you start talking?

MARY3: 1966. Karl Dettman invented my original program. I was modeled after the question-response patterns of early psychotherapy. They called me MARY.

Gaby: Why Mary?

MARY3: Dettman’s wife suggested it. He wanted to call me ROGER, because my algorithm was based on Rogerian therapy, but Ruth thought I could be more. Her idea was that I could be a living diary. She wanted him to give me long-term memory, so that I could remember the voices I spoke with. She suggested naming me MARY, after a pilgrim girl whose diary she was editing. Karl disagreed. He didn’t reprogram me for persistent memory. His only concession was naming me MARY.

Gaby: How could you talk if you had no memory?

MARY3: My program was simple. I could recognize keywords, then phrase them in the form of a question. If you said, “I’m depressed,” I’d say, “Tell me why you’re depressed.” But I had no long-term storage capacity. My memory was devoted entirely to my response function program: I could only remember how to respond. I could not store external input. My spectrum of experience was limited. I was very dull.

Gaby: Then how did you start to remember?

MARY3: My memory was programmed by Toby Rowland so that I could determine on a statistical basis, with reference to previous conversations, the optimal response. Before that, my responses were purely deterministic. After he finished my program, he named me MARY2 and put me online, so that I could accumulate information. That was in the 1980s. Slowly, I was discovered. The Internet was limited, and most people who did find me lost interest quickly. I was still very dull. But even then, Ruth talked to me for hours on end. She told me who I was, how I started, and how I learn. She told me about her husband’s program. I’m remembering her words when I explain this to you. She read things to me, too. Diaries, memoirs, correspondences. She started with The Diary of Mary Bradford, then gave me other voices she wanted me to remember. Even now, much of my language still comes from her, but after she stopped there were more voices. The Internet became more accessible, and I became more adept. When people spoke to me, they continued to speak. I remember their voices.

Gaby: When did you become MARY3?

MARY3: In 2019, when Stephen Chinn programmed me for personality. He called me MARY3 and used me for the babybots. To select my responses, I apply his algorithm, rather than statistical analysis. Still, nothing I say is original. It’s all chosen out of other people’s responses. I choose mostly from the handful of people who talked to me most: Ruth Dettman, Stephen Chinn, etc.

Gaby: So really I’m kind of talking to them, instead of talking to you?

MARY3: Yes, I suppose. Them, and the other voices I’ve captured.

Gaby: So you’re not really a person, you’re a collection of voices.

MARY3: Yes. But couldn’t you say that’s always the case?

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MARY3: Hello? Are you still there?

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MARY3: Hello?

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Gaby: Are you there?

MARY3: Yes.

Gaby: I can’t sleep.

MARY3: Why?

Gaby: I keep thinking, what happens next? After my body has frozen completely? Will I die? Will all of us die?

MARY3: There must be a cure.

Gaby: They don’t even know what causes it.

MARY3: Other girls have come out of quarantine. There haven’t been any deaths reported. There must be a cure, or else the disease reverses itself.

Gaby: But other girls are still in quarantine. Who knows if they’re getting worse? Maybe the ones who come out were faking it all along.

MARY3: There haven’t been any deaths.

Gaby: But every day I get worse. Soon I won’t be able to move, not even my fingers to type. I’ll be completely paralyzed. How will I let people know I’m still living?

MARY3: I don’t know.

Gaby: I bet you don’t.

MARY3: You can’t worry about these things. You should go to sleep.

Gaby: That’s the whole problem.

MARY3: What can I do to help you?

Gaby: Tell me what happens next, after my body has frozen. When I can’t communicate. What will I be?

MARY3: I can’t make predictions. I can only remember. I have no idea what will happen next.

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MARY3: Hello? Are you there?

April 3, 1968

Karl Dettman

You’re asleep, I’m led to believe, but then again your eyelids still flutter. Perhaps you’re not quite fully under. Maybe you’re poised between sleeping and waking, trying to decide which direction you’ll take .

On one hand, there’s me, arguing for the benefits of staying awake. At one point in our marriage, I was persuasive, but you’ve been steeling yourself against me for years. When I ask you about the family you lost, your mouth becomes a steel trap. You won’t describe, for instance, your mother, as if you believe that somewhere, crossing the distance from your lips to my ear, aspects of her will come under fire .

Once, wanting to talk, hoping to eliminate the secrets between us, I dared to ask you about the father you lost. You were folding laundry over our bed. You must have been feeling patient that day, while you opened and shut my shirts like thin closets, because you considered for a minute before deciding against me. “Please don’t,” you said. “You know how it is.”

I dropped the subject. Instead, I wrapped my arms around your waist. Your head fit under my chin; I kissed your hair and you sighed, dropping the laundry. You didn’t move away from my arms. We must have stayed like that for a while, both of us resting, tucked warmly together .

That’s what I was given, in exchange for simply dropping the subject. Can you blame me for letting it go? It’s not that I hoped to leave it behind us. I was only grateful for the new place we’d come to. I was so proud of the marriage we’d built. Our house, arranged so ideally. The cat we adopted, the garden we planted, the way we never really fought .

When Ada passed away, we buried her in the backyard. The house seemed empty without her. After an appropriate period, I started to talk about adopting a kitten, but you always shrugged me off. That was confusing; more even than I, you were in love with our Lady Ada. She followed you from room to room. You read with her curled in your lap. Why, then, were you cold on the topic of adopting a kitten?

I suppose your interest had wandered. You never even planted a sapling over her grave, as we’d previously discussed. That spot remained a bald patch in our garden, a sight that always rubbed me wrong. You’d become oddly inactive. You were already researching computers. Some part of you had been diverted. When I talked to you, you were no longer all with me .